All The Stars In The Sky
by HVK
Summary: Darkness rises, and Sierra, Cody, their friends, and new intern Rossiu are thrust into a Grim Dark nightmare of war. But they and their friends have got Kamina and his Ork Boyz on their side, and that evens it up! Now they just have to fix it all.
1. Ere We Go!

Dreams are a weird thing.

I had a weird dream just the night before I wrote this, possibly because of my current Cody/Sierra thing, which is now my new One True Pairing. (I'm a sucker for Huge Girl Tiny Guy.) For some reason, because I was busying my mind with that sort of thing, I had Total Drama dreams. I have NO idea what they were about, but for some reason, it shifted towards the end of me living with complete strangers with hostile intentions and for some reason there was a pool involved.

Anyway, for some reason, me in the dream was watching reruns of a season of Total Drama that never was, and the end credits featured, among other people, Rossiu from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. The dream-me felt compelled to explain to my dream foes who Rossiu actually IS and why it's cool that he should be there. (Even in my dreams, I refuse to shut up and stop explaining everything to everyone.)

When I woke up, due to dream logic, I was _absolutely _convinced that Rossiu somehow had a bit role in Total Drama somewhere. I realized the truth, of course, but this plot bunny stuck in my head:

'What if Rossiu was in Total Drama? What if something happened to push Sierra and Cody more firmly together? And what if I put Orks in it too? And the break-out guy from Gurren Lagann?'

Thus, I came up with this crossover of Gurren Lagann, Total Drama and Warhammer 40,000. Probably other stuff later on.

Let the chaos..._commence_.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gurren Lagann, Total Drama Island, or Warhammer 40, 000, or any other series that may show up later on.

...

_It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. _

_Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse._

_To be a man in such times is to be one amonst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods._

_-Pretty much everything you need to know about Grimdark in general and Warhammer 40,000 in particular_

_"Mark my words! This drill will open a hole in the universe! And that hole will be a path for those behind us! The dreams of those who've fallen! The hopes of those who'll follow! Those two sets of dreams weave together in a double helix! Drilling a path towards tomorrow! And that's Tengen Toppa! That's Gurren Lagann! My drill is the drill...THAT CREATES THE HEAVENS!"_

_-Simon the Digger, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann_

_"Go, then. There are other worlds then these."_

_-Jake Chambers, The Gunslinger, effectively paraphrasing stuff that's gonna happen later here_

...

It is said that history repeats itself.

This is because people are very good at pointing out the stupidly obvious.

However, sometimes it gets a bit more...intricate than political matters or what-have-you. Sometimes it's more personal.

Sometimes a man becomes the same sort of man he was in another life, even though it makes absolutely no damn sense at all for it to be like that.

It's weird but, say the philosophers, that's life for you.

...

_Somewhere in the deepest parts of Canada..._

It was a good mysterious bunker.

You didn't get bunkers like this very often. You had to go to some lengths to make them like this. No, this was a proper 'so deep a bomb'll just nick it, steel walls under a dozen feet of solid rock, snow practically covering the whole thing' kind of bunker.

It had, at some point in the past, been a military installation by a fringe branch of the Canadian government that had spared no expense in constructing a super-awesome bunker of _DOOM _in their mysterious and evil plot to take over the world. Then they realized that taking over the world through military might was impractical, stupid and a waste of time, so they turned towards a more lucrative means of doing so: reality TV.

(The man who made this happened insisted that a demon with snake-eyes named Crowley had given him the idea. No one believed him, at least outside of the owner of a small bookstore elsewhere, but he wasn't precisely human so it didn't count.)

This, for the curious, was the origin of the extremely successful reality TV show known, through it's various seasons as Total Drama Island, Total Drama Action (which had flopped big time) and Total Drama World Tour. Inside the deepest part of the bunker, big important things were happening.

Or, to be more accurate, the sadistic and possibly sociopathic host of the Total Drama series, Chris MacLean, was doing what he was most famous for besides tormenting his hapless contestants, indulging in absurd levels of narcissim and becoming increasingly paranoid about eight-pointed shapes: harrassing the interns.

The setting of such nastiness was what had probably been a war-room in the bunker, for important political people to adminster the business-end of war from safety. The tables had been removed and all kinds of stuff put in, and among them were three booths near the vault-type security door, these booths being the same sort as used on singing audition reality series.

"No, no," Chris said; he was a handsome strong-chinned light-skinned man with dark hair and a slightly worrying grin, wearing his trademark blue button-up shirts and brown slacks. In deferrence to his own awesomeness, he was sitting with his feet on the booth, one shoe in kicking range of the button. "That's not how you swing those fish. More in the wrist! Move a little more! Ooh, watch out for the-" There was a sound of breaking water, a loud snapping, and a girlish scream. "Eh, never mind. We hardly knew ye...er, whatever your name was."

"Not that this isn't funny," Said Blainely, a voluptuous woman with long blonde hair and a attitude more appropiate to a dead prune. "But isn't there a word for this kind of thing, um, thinking of it now, starts with 'ill', maybe a bit 'mur', oh, that's right, '_illegal' _and '_murder'_!"

Chris shrugged. "Eh, no big deal, we'll just get them back with clones and junk."

"...We have cloning technology."

"Sure we do. We're _Canadian_."

A moment passed as they silently acknowledged that, as Canadians, they were the unknown lords and masters of the world. Cloning technology was the least of their wonders. (The day when a foolish nation tried to conquer their country only to be faced by fifty-foot-tall killer robots with heat vision was soon to dawn...)

"PUT YOUR BACKS INNA IT!" Roared Chef Hatchet, a huge, alarming and mildly deranged black man wearing a chef's attire (though it was a matter of some dispute if he actually _was _a chef); his booth appeared to have been seriously damaged by the way he kept slamming on the button. "Swing harder! Knock somebody down already!"

Their attention was being directed at the horror in the middle of the room.

Picture a tree. A very large tree, a good-sized redwood that was still small enough to fit into the room. Picture this tree being supported by a complicated array bolted to the ground, it's roots spread into what is unmistakably an aquarium; it is unmistakable because there are quite a lot of sharks swimming in there, with laser-beam blasting things on their heads.

Picture that, on top of the array holding the tree up, there is a series of crosswalks made of quite fragile wood. On top of these, about six or so interns were fighting each other at the behest of Chris, Chef, and Blainely (who had been recognized for her cruelty, narcissim and personality disorders by being declared an executive producer of the Total Drama series to come). This fighting was done with live sword fish that had, for some unknowable reason, been genetically engineered with dagger-like scales and two heads. Also, a sword-bill that resembled an organic chainsaw. For reasons that tended towards being a sadist, Chris had tasked them to cut down the mighty tree in front of them before the others did with the fish while avoiding getting lasered or eaten by sharks, and incidentally knock the other interns off if they could. (Chris would cheerfully admit that there was no real point to this challenge, since it involved cutting down a tree with a fish, so it likely wouldn't make it as a challenge into Total Drama Reloaded, but he was bored, there was money lying around, and it was either this or making them do an obstacle run for a shrubbery and he wasn't quite sure what a shrubbery actually _was_.)

Also, there was, of course, an exterior motive.

Someone hit the water after being pushed off in a panic; the sharks came in, there was a pause, and then he was violently hurled out of the water. (Given that the other interns that had fallen in were generally still in there but in a lot of pieces, he was pretty lucky there.) Chris raised an eyebrow. "...Huh."

"They didn't want me," Complained the intern, a dorky looking redhead with a huge nose named Billy.

"And we don't either," Blainely said, pressing down her button. "You're out! _To the underground operations with you!_"

A trapdoor appeared under Billy and he fell with a less-then-noble cry of "_WHEEEE!_"

The trapdoor slammed behind him with a terrible finality. "Ahem," Said one of the other interns. "Are there really underground operations?"

"Sure," Chris said, not sounding overly concerned. "Whatever." He picked a bit of bread and threw it into a nearby cage where a horribly ill and feral boy was shrieking and banging at the bars.

"...Why do we still have that Ezekiel kid here again?" Chef said, trying not to stare.

"Because no one said I couldn't and I always wanted a pet!" Chris threw some more bread at Ezekiel.

One of the interns, a young and vaugely Asian boy with a solemn face and dark hair tied back in a ponytail, knocked another intern off the side of the crosswalks, dooming him but at least it wasn't the sharks. He looked at the tree, at the fish in his hands, and reconsidered.

An impossible task, he considered, is not impossible when you look at it from the proper angle.

Chris, gleefully grinning at the horror under his control, was having an _awesome _time. He grinned. "So, Blainely! What's the latest on the old-school contestants? It's been half a year said the World Tour, something good's gotta have happened."

Blainely stared. "...Why do you care?"

Chris grinned evilly. "I got an idea. For _another _show."

"Oh?"

"What do you think this intern thing is for? I need some guys to do stuff on it, and picking them myself is boring, so...this happens!"

"Huh. I thought you were just being a sadist."

"Yes."

"Well," Blainely said, remembering some of the stuff she'd heard from _Celebrity Manhunt_. "I-" There was a ripping, roaring, _loud _sound. "The hell?"

There was a even louder noise; this is to be expected when a redwood is cut in half and falls over to crash most of an aquarium, to the surprise and shock of the sharks residing in that aquarium.

Behind the stump was the solemn-looking intern. Sawdust whirled around him like a storm. In his hand was a chainsaw. "I cut the tree down," He said evenly. "I believe...I have won."

The three judges stared. "...Is he allowed to do that?" Chef muttered to Chris.

"No one said I couldn't," The intern said.

"Yeah, gotta remember that later," Chris said. "Uh, okay...yeah, you win. I think?" He waved at the rest. "You guys get on out of here-"

"FREEDOM!" The interns and sharks shouted, running right through the nearest door. Right over Chris, as a matter of fact. "Ow," He said.

He got up, and the intern slowly walked over to him. He still had the chainsaw, and a really disturbing blank expression. "Uh, hi," Chris said.

The intern stared politely at him.

"Uh..."

The intern continued to stare at him.

Chris blinked.

The intern, again, kept staring.

"...Could you put down the chainsaw? Please?" The intern did so. "Okay, uh...um..." Chris never bothered to remember the intern's names. "Your name's...uh...Mitsuki?"

"No."

"Johnny?"

"No.

"Maes?"

"No."

"Gendo?"

"No."

"...Kira?"

"Sir," The intern said, somehow saying so politely that it came back the other side a grave insult. "Perhaps you could look at my _nametag_?"

Chris frowned and decided to make this intern do some sort of horrible challenge later. "...'Rossiu Adel'? Your name's _Rossiu_?"

"Yes."

"Uh, I'm not a grammer Nazi or anything, but shouldn't it be spelled like Rousseau?"

"How did he prounounce the grammer?" Blainely asked Chef, who shrugged.

Rossiu frowned faintly, and shrugged; he didn't know either.

Chris appeared to consider. "Aren't you a little young to be an intern?"

Rossiu, who appeared to be at most in his mid-teens, shrugged. "Yes. Yes I am."

"Eh." Chris leaned forward a bit, grinning like a hyena. (The fictional sort, not the real ones, which get a bad rap these days.) "So I was thinking about doing a show with the old contestants..." He explained his proposal to Rossiu. A zeppelin was involved. As were hidden cameras, the promise of ratings and a slight hint of 'I am gonna make you pay for stuff'.

Rossiu, figuring that it really didn't matter what he said, nodded. "Very well."

Chris grinned. Rossiu, a feeling of certain doom dawning on him, twitched.

...

_Somewhere quite a long ways away..._

Space is big. Like, really really big. You think it's a long way from your house to the shopping plaza, but that's nothing to space...

Introductions to the vastness of space go on like this quite a lot. Frankly, there is no accounting for how absurdly big the universe is. So the rational brain simply deals with it by, basically, not dealing with it. It pretends the universe is something nicer and easier for the sane brain to comprehend, puts the concept of 'existence' into a neat little box so it doesn't frighten anyone.

In the same vein, no one wants to think about what a _multiverse_ is in terms of bigness.

Somewhere by a distant dead planet, space shudders and spits out a small ship that doesn't look like it should even had gotten off the ground.

It's big, and looks a lot like a flying box. A big metal box welded and riveted and soldered together and painted blue. For luck, possibly. Huge engines at one engine propell it, spitting green fire in spite of the fact that it's the vacuum of outer space and there's nothing to burn. Weapons protrude from every surface. Massive, gigantic versions of gatling guns, cannons, rocket launchers, and stranger things that glow with plasma and forces that frankly shouldn't exist.

The very universe ripples around it; the raw consensus of collective reality descending upon this ship that is powered by the raw _belief _of it's occupants and realizing that physics is peanuts next to the power of belief, no matter how absurd.

Inside the ship, it is anarchy. Great green lumbering brutes, misshapen yellow fangs in their jaws and eyes glowing red, swarm throughout; a lot of them are doing the tasks that keep the thing running, others are doing maintenence, but this doesn't last long, and upon a predetermined signal, they rush into what could, with some heisitation, be called the bridge of the ship.

The monstrous creatures gather together in a green tide in front of what they have built to be a vauge resemblence of a podium but is more accurately a massive speaker standing on top of a broken statue's base, and there is in turn a throne made of pillows-over-scrap rammed into the speaker's front.

The brutes paid attention as the man sitting in that throne grinned down at them and stood up. "Oy, _BOYZ!_" He screamed, speaking in a bizarre parody of a working-class English accent.

"_BOSS!_" They roar back.

"Where da hells is we, huh?"

The brutes rose up as one to answer, paused, and fell back. A small one raised his hand and said, "I dunno."

Grumbling signaled that the small one had a point. "Da grot's right," The man in the throne said. "We don't know where da hells we is...

"_BUT WHEN'S DAT EVER STOPPED US BEFORE, EH!_"

The monsters cheered in a massive roar. It didn't really matter what anyone said, they would have probably cheered, but for this man...he was _special_.

He wasn't just a Warboss. He was _da Boss_.

"We just went and stomped da Chaos Boyz!" The man said. He was hardly a man in age; a young adult, at best. Limber and built for speed, not yet with the bulk of a full-grown man, he nevertheless had a presence that seemed to imply immense form, vastly greater than any of the monsters listening to him, enraptured.

"We stomped 'em good! And da ones we left got mopped up good by the humie boyz! Dat world they ran like da squigs dey are? _Ain't GONNA SEE DER UGLY MUGS AGAIN! COZ' OF US, DAT WORLD'S __**FREE!**_" Green tattoos wrapped across most of his body, perhaps in imitation of the creatures in front of him; over his shoulders and on his back and around his arms, mostly twisting curves, and the overall effect was of emerald spirals curving around his skin.

"_And free's good, boyz! Free's da first thing da other's gotta get before they can see da light and start gettin' good an' ORKY!_ _And what's da best thing for dem 'till every'un's as good an' Orky as us!_"

"SHOW 'EM DA RIGHT AND PROPPA!" Shouted the monsters in front of him, like an army to a hero, or worshippers to an avenging god.

The man grinned. Implausibly blue hair backlit his scarred face, a shock of sky-hued color, and the orange rock cut into a V-shape and polished until it was translucent. (It wasn't supposed to work like that, but this man didn't care about trivial things like 'the laws of physics'.) _"Dat's my boyz! SO! You knows what we gonna do! We're gonna ride da Warp! We're gonna take the Chaos and shove it's head back up it's own ass and beat it 'till dem half-rate Chaos boyz and der lame gods see dat GORK AND MORK are coming to rip 'em new ones, and we'z gonna clear da way for GORK AND MORK! We's gonna go to every star in the sky, we'z gonna find what's wrong on the da worlds we see, and we're gonna STOMP DA WRONG FLAT!"_

In his other hand was a beautiful monstrosity, like a chainsaw but grafted to a hilt, a spike-studded grim around his hand, the blade of the thing wider than he was and certainly taller. Yet, he lifted it as though it weighed no more than a feather. He pulled the trigger, and the machine's roar echoed the roaring _soul _of his every word.

"_We're gonna save da whole damn multiverse_!" The man yelled.

"_WOO-YEEAH!_" The monsters roared.

The man removed the V-shaped translucent stone from his eyes. One of his eyes was as red as any of the monster's before him. The other, though...the pupil had spun out into an ever twisting spiral, glowing with a glorious green light. The light of his soul; the light of a will that would break a fallen universe and put it back in a better shape.

He grinned.

"_WHAT'S WE GONNA DO!_" He asked his monstrous brethern.

"_**SHOW DEM DA RIGHT AND PROPPA!**_" They roared at him, with such insane enthusiasm that a few of them picked up the guy next to him and clubbed the guy in front.

The man revved his weapon, a _chainsword_. "_AND WHO'S DA ONE YOU'S GONNA FOLLOW TO DO DAT?_"

"_DA BIG BOSS!"_ They shouted back.

The man's chainsword revved, a roar as loud and primal as a dragon's. "_**AND WHAT ARE WE GONNA SHOW DA MULITVERSE 'FORE WE'RE DONE!"**_

As one, they shouted, _"DA BIGGEST WAAAUGH EVER!_"

The man roared with them. "_**DEN WHAT ARE YA WAITING FOR, BOYZ! WE'S GOT WORK TA DO!**_**"**

He, and the monsters, his _brothers_, roared as one. "_**WAAAAAUGH!**_"

The universe trembled as a field of belief, a self-sustained force of unreality rocketed their ship outwards.

If one cared to listen, they could hear a mighty chant from the ship. "'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go! 'ER WE GO!"

The WAAAUGH! went on.

...

_Some days later, on Earth proper, somewhere in Canada..._

A teenager, brown-haired and rather small, stared up into the night sky.

Something seemed...off.

The teen, who was named Cody, tilted his head, trying to determine what he was looking at.

A somewhat older dark-skinned girl with a rather gaudy hairstyle standing next to him did the same thing, but she seemed more interested in just doing it; she hummed loudly as she tilted her head more enthusiastically. Where the boy was small, she was a lot bigger in quite a lot of ways; she was very tall by most standards, curvy, and she was simply a lot bigger than Cody was. She tilted her head too far, and her odd hair fell off, proving itself to be a wig, and extremely short and scruffy hair was revealed.

"Sierra?" Cody said, not looking away. "Your wig?"

"Huh?" The girl, or rather Sierra, said. "Oh!" She ducked down and put the wig back on as fast as she could. "Thanks."

"No problem."

The two of them continued to stare at the sky; Cody for his own enigmatic reasons, and Sierra because it seemed like fun.

After the business of the World Tour, the two of them had become closer friends; (there was some delays involved in that; Sierra was begining to understand that obessive fangirl behavior was not conductive towards winning a boy as your friend and potential spouse, and Cody was still a little alarmed that Sierra had somehow managed to move into his neighborhood without any warning, but on the plus side, at least they had friends now, even if that was basically just each other) their current state being something between 'friends' and a higher relationship, though Cody was still honestly a bit scared of the implications. (Not as much as he would have been previously, mind you.)

This relationship matter was partly due to Cody coming to helping her during her medical problems after it all ended; given that it was due to her making him a cake for the first birthday anyone had remembered for quite a long time, it seemed the good thing to do. Something like that is not very conducive to people growing apart. Luckily, in the months since then, Sierra had recovered nicely, though her hair had yet to grow back. She was also quite plainly plotting on making Cody her boyfriend, but some thinking had determined that the overly aggressive approach only frightened Cody.

At the moment, they were enjoying what Sierra persisted in calling a date; this basically amounted to him wandering outside in the middle of the night, bewildered by some exceedingly odd astrological activity, and her following him around in an amiable sort of way.

Sierra glanced around quickly, a sneaky look on her face, and quiet sidled over to Cody. He didn't appear to notice. She got close to him...closer..._closer_...

"Sierra, you have your chest in my hair," Cody said. "Again."

"Whoops?" Sierra said, backing off a very slight fraction of a bit, trying and failing miserable to sound innocent.

Cody shrugged, somewhat resigned to his lot in life, and turned his attention back to the sky.

He blinked.

"Sierra?" He said in a small voice. "Do you see that?"

"Huh?" She said. "I dunno, what are you-" She stopped, making a small squeaking noise.

"You do see it!"

"Uh huh," She managed. "Yeah, uh huh...I see it."

She was, of course, speaking of a group of stars that certainly hadn't been there before and were spelling out _YOU'RE PRETTY MUCH SCREWED AT THIS POINT_.

She blinked. The stars were gone. She looked over and down at Cody, who looked up at her with a horrified expression. "...What was that?" Cody said, in a strangled little voice.

"An omen?" Sierra said. "A horrible, evil, suddenly-suspicious-and-spooky omen that violates every tenant of physics by being there?"

"Yeah," Cody said. "I was afraid of that." He paused. "Um. You don't suppose...we imagined that?"

"NO!" Sierra said, with surprising anger. "No, no, no no no no _NO_! No! No, just...NO! Don't you ever watch movies! Don't you ever watch disaster or horror or fantasy movies when the guy sees something weird happen and he decides it didn't happen or it was something else when it was so _OBVIOUSLY _an omen of horrible achey-breaky eat-your-face-up the-sun's-going-boom DOOM! Bad stuff happens, and I am NOT going to let my boyfriend go around being genre-unsavvy and get eaten by a grue!"

"I'm not your boyfriend," Cody said, with a slight hint that he was worried that the inverse might, in fact, be true and he hadn't realized it yet. "...A grue?"

"People on the Internet love _Zork_, but never mind!" Sierra poined at the sky frantically. "You know what this means?"

"That I've wasted my life being the chew-toy on a reality TV show?" Cody guessed.

"Yes. I mean, no! It means...it means...uh..."

"What does it mean?"

Sierra crossed her arms and tapped her foot. "If my endless hours of watching movies, playing video games and reading awesome fanfiction mean anything, it can only mean one thing..."

"What?"

"...That a horrible elder god of sadism is coming and the only way to forestall it's wrath is for you and me to do the honeymoon thing _right now_?"

Cody blinked. "What, really?"

Sierra twitched. Cody was making such a _innocent _little face at her. "Ahhh, not the face! I can't lie to that face!"

"What face?"

"That one! Yes, _that's the one!_"

Cody blinked again. He seemed to realize what Sierra actually meant by her previous 'honeymoon' bit, having been distracted by the horrible omen. His face turned bright red, and with his brain suffering a sudden lack of blood, fainted on the ground.

Sierra stared. She poked gently in the stomach. He twitched a bit. She shrugged, pulled him over her shoulder and walked off.

In about five minutes, she was going to remember the whole 'omen of doom' thing, but for the moment the thought of Cody basically being under her power was going to occupy her dreams for quite a while. (Not that he ever _wasn't,_ given that she was a lot bigger and stronger than him, but details.)

...

Somewhere else, a voice speaks.

It is a voice like slabs of lead slamming together, with the echoes of that which will end even Oblivion. The voice of the Ultimate Reality. The Harvester of Mankind. The Reaper Man. And to some, the Death of Kindness.

YOU'RE NOT VERY SUBTLE, ARE YOU?

The man who this is addressed to laughs, in this place that is somewhere because everything else ought to be elsewhere. This man has the light skin and strong build of a typical man from a country called Amestris; his vivid green eyes are covered by a pair of rectangular glasses, and his dark hair stands up in odd ways.

He is covered, not in normal clothing, but in a bizarre mesh of moving blackness. Not shadows, for darkness is only cast by obstructions in the way of light, but dark light, the darkness at the other side of light.

He grins. "Hey, whatever gets those kid's attention, right?" He holds up his hand. On one finger is a ring carved from solid black crystal, with a peculiar shape on it.

Death shakes his head. He does not know humanity except as an observer, so the motion is jerky and goes on for a fair bit. He knows how it starts, but is not sure when you're supposed to stop. STILL, muses Death. IT MAY YET WORK. THEY WILL BE...WARY. AND THAT WILL OPEN A WAY FOR THE ORKS TO COME.

"Which will give those people a bit of a chance when _they _come, yeah?" The man said, raising an eyebrow.

IT MAY BE SO.

"That's good." The man grinned. "So...you ever hear of a thing called 'Bridge'?"

YES, THOUGH I NEVER DID UNDERSTAND HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK. I ALWAYS THOUGHT TO ASK TWOFLOWER WHEN I BECAME TIME.

The man rubbed his palms together. "Well! Time to figure out how it works, y'know?"

Death looked like he was going to regret this. Actually, Death looked like a skeleton, but that was mainly habit.


	2. Da Boss Gets A Plan

Wow, I actually got people reviewing this. And I intended this as my 'lazy story' to begin with. The one I go to when I have blocks and stuff. Glad to know that the people enjoy the products of my deranged imaginings.

Also, I'm writing this as I go along. A genuine unplotted story...or something like that, whatever.

Writing the Total Drama kids wasn't as hard as I thought. Bear in mind, I haven't seen any seasons thoroughly except for World Tour, so any inconsistencies should either be blamed on this being a alternate universe where everything gets frakked up or, better yet, alert me so that it might be corrected. (Wikis cannot account for every little detail, unfortunately.) I know much about Gurren Lagann and Warhammer 40k; Total Drama has some blind spots for me.

Disclaimer: Total Drama Island/Warhammer 40,000/Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann are copyrighted Fresh TV/Gameshop Works/Funimation.

...

_Across the country, twenty-four young people are being greeted by men in black suits at their doorsteps. (Or whatever, these are some damn weird young people.)_

_These particular men have come bearing something that these people have come to dread and get twitchy-eyed in the presence of:_

_Contracts._

_Those vile, neatly worded little legal documents that have become the bane of their existence. Quite terribly, it would appear that these young people are being called back to attend yet ANOTHER reality TV show, so that thousands more might yet bow at the alter of mass media and offer their tribute to the gods of the networks._

_This is, of course, not readily accepted. The more legally savvy among them point out that their contracts have ended after the World Tour. (And their extensive recoveries from the injuries sustained was no small matter either.) The others have more...volatile, whiny or stubborn reactions. (More than a few people in black suits run away in terror.)_

_Regardless, a point is reached. These young people MUST return once more. The gods of the media will not be denied. Attention is directed towards a crucial point by the legal-savvy, towards a line of wording that basically amounts to "After this point, (insert contestant's name here) is hereby released from contractual obligations relating to the Total Drama series". A triumph is assumed._

_The lawyers bring out the magnifying glasss, powered up by several thousand times, and magnify a tiny spot between the words 'is' and 'hereby', over a seemingly insignificant bit of ink._

_On closer inspection, the dot proves to be a very very very small three-letter word: 'Not'._

_The resultant screams of horror, despair and rage echo in dimensions beyond mere space, and they are heard by gods chaotic and malicious, and they just laugh and laugh and laugh..._

...

And several months after that occured, one must return to the Ork warship: massive, unstoppable and as wieldly as a cow.

A pair of sails had been extended from the sides. There didn't seem to be much point in making cloth sails a thousand yards across, espicially when they served no practical purpose in the vacuum of space or had already been shredded by debris, but it still looked cool.

(Notably, what little recognizable of the cloth sails there was sported a logo; a skull, with the top of it's head in flames and one eye narrowed in a wink, as if to say it was all in good fun. The skull sported sunglasses; it was anyone's guess why.)

In the pseudo-bridge, once more the Orks had assembled around their great leader, who was absently poking at a absolutely massive monolith of a device that looked a bit like a compass, a bit like a complicated alter of cables and brass metal and too many knobs and also a big glowing bit at the top, and mostly like pop art; call it 'Mad Science 01'.

The brutish aliens huddled around their beloved Boss; surely, a grand pronouncement awaited them.

He yawned. "I'm BORED."

They considered this. One Ork picked up another by the wrist, swung him in the air and hit the Boss as hard as he could.

There was a yell, growing distant, and a loud thud upon sudden impact with the wall.

"Did dat do da trick?" The Ork who had been a blunt weapon asked helpfully.

Their Boss came running back with a mighty yell of "_Who-the-hell-do-you-think-I-am PAWNCH!_"

The resultant crash, dealt to the wall on the other side of the bridge, would require a number of Mek Boyz to fix, mostly with big power tools that crushed stuff. And some Painboy Dokz, to get the Orks _out _of the impact in the first place. (Being Orks, they were perfectly alive, though moaned 'Da Boss hits like a Warlord' a few times when asked how they got that way.)

Their boss glowered up and raised his fist, still glowing with a faint green shine. One of his eyes twitched behind his primitive sunglasses. The Orks tensed; not wary, Orks saw a Boss that went and pulverized his own men as a Boss that knew his stuff, but were certainly willing to run like hell if the Boss went frak.

Their Boss paused. "Huh. I do feel a bit betta."

The Orks assembled glanced at each other. "Yay?" A small grot ventured.

Da Boss appeared to decide that the moment was right. "...Boyz, I been doing sum thinkin'."

"Don't dat hurt?" One Ork asked.

"Not when ya been smashed in da head by Mork, it ain't! I gots the Morky thinky in me, I knows my stuff."

"I thought Gork was da thinky," A random Ork, whose named was Bitz after all his many stitches, said.

Another Ork pulled out a rough and shoddily repaired energy-based firearm (or laspistol, though far larger than it ought to be). "HERESY!" He shouted, and shot Bitz in the face.

The massive pincer-shaped mechanical Power Claw that replaced Bitz's left arm swung down and hit him between the legs. "Auugh, my Orky crotch!" He said, for the look of the thing, and fell over. He didn't move.

Da Boss frowned at the trigger-happy Ork. "Gritgrotz, whud I tell yaz about doing what da Imperium gits do?"

"...Dat it'z a bad idea?"

"An'?"

"An' it ain't pruh-duck-tive tah go 'round shooting people in the face when dey say summit yaz don't like an' yelling 'HERESY'?"

"An'?"

"An' doing grotty humie stuff iz bad?"

"Oy!" A grot said, offended. Without looking, Gritgrotz shot one of them too. The grot squealed in pain, now missing an arm, but paused. It shouted with joy, realizing that it now had an opening to get a stabby-shooty-fake arm-thingy put in. It picked up it's arm as an afterthought. "Free backscratcher! Whoo!"

"Dat'z righ'," Their boss said with a satisfied nod. "An'?"

"Sorry," Said Gritzgrotz.

"Dat'z better. Oy, someone check an' see if Bitz iz alive."

Bitz raised his hand and gave a thumb's up. "I'm okay!"

"You face iz all smokey."

"Dang!" Bitz said. "No wonder I aint' seein' anything. Thought summin threw a blanket over me head. I'm blind!" He paused. "I getz da Painboyz ta put meck-can-i-cal eyez in?"

"Yep," Said Da Boss.

"WHOO!"

"You SEE!" Gritzgrotz said. "Did him a favor, I did."

"Shuddit," Their boss said. "G'wan and get you sum new eyez, Bitz."

Bitz heisitated. "...But what if da new eyes dun' work right?"

"BAH! Dun' go 'round thinking emo grunk like dat! It gun work for yaz if yaz WANTS it to! MAKE it work! I know yaz can do it! I BELIEVES IN YAZ!"

"YEEEEAH!" Bitz yelled, running off. He ran into the walls, choppa-racks, a few dakka-bikes the Bika Boyz had left around and pretty much went out of his way to run into stuff, but he did that all the time anyway, so no big difference.

Eventually, an Ork he'd commanded for some extremely important work came up to him. "Oy, Boss! I did wadger wanted!"

"Good timing. Gibbit ta me!" Da Boss said.

"What Da Boss want?" Gritzgrotz asked, bewildered.

"Easy; we're bored! Bored Boyz make da bad shit go down, savvy?"

"Nope."

"Of course not. Anywayz, wot I'm sayin' iz that we needs something ta pass the time, and I figured, we'z by a _inhabited _planet, right? Or coming to one, whatever. Well, yaz see's, I found some _communications _wavy-thingies! Like, for stuff. Picto-slates and fun watchy stuff, that style of thing."

"Uh huh...?"

"So! I figured; me and my Boyz gots to see da GOOD STUFF these pipple got going! We'z sees what we got's to deal with, who'z we gotta stomp, and find good stuff to make popcorn and watch."

"We gotz popcorn?" A random Ork asked, puzzled.

"We watches stuff. Don't matter if it's planetary programming or inter-wurld broadcastin' or Mana-Net junk, _yaz gotta has popcorn when yaz watches it_."

The Ork who had brought Da Boss news spoke up. "So, me and da Boyz I russled up for dis, we found some good stuff, yaz knows?"

"Like what?" Asked Da Boss.

"Buncha movies, some _really _good TV shows-"

"Cartoonz?"

"Whadda Warp does yaz think I am, Boss! 'Course dere's cartoons!" Da Boss grunted. "Anyways, I fig-yured yaz might wantsa take a look at 'em, see?"

"BOYZ!" Da Boss roared. "It's TV TIME!"

A tremendous roar echoed in the bridge, several hundred Orks yelling as one.

They crowded around the device Da Boss had been occupied with; some Mek Boyz had crowded around it and rewired it so that several screens were now displayed in mid-air above it, so big that you could sit across the bridge and still see pretty well. More adjustments were made, the collected data that the media-searching-Orks had gotten together, and let the feed connect.

One of them threw Da Boss a wire-strewn badly soldered thing that approached the idea of a remote. Da Boss caught it without even looking and pressed a big smiley-faced button that made things happen. The screens flickered to life, images already playing.

Hours passed. Perhaps days, they got distracted easily and this was some really cool stuff. Popcorn (or banged grains; they'd gone to one world where very little stompin' had been required and they'd called it that there) was prepared, and to suit their numbers, it was enough for an army. (It was very cheesy; Orks love their cheese.) The Orks passed a long while sampling the media of the planet they were coming upon.

They watched interestedly at the war movies where the heroic sociopaths gun down the vile dictator; it was part of their daily lives, of course.

They laughed like a roaring engine at comedies and funny movies, the humourous instinct bypassing cultures and the barrier of species.

They booed when the villain won. (This was rather familiar in their crapsack lives, of course, but that didn't mean they liked it.)

They made fun of the sci-fi technologies and kept yelling at the people on hwo it could be done better.

They cried when the hero died to make a happy ending, or when it was a bit of a downer.

They were genially bemused at all the fuss about men and women getting kissy and mopey and happy when they got 'round each other, except for Da Boss who was genuinely interested, even a bit melancholy. But that was Humie stuff, they didn't ask.

They roared their joy when the bands of brothers, the friends closer than families, the bonds of companionship won over brute hatred, base evil or malevolence.

They...completely skipped over the gross sex stuff meant to apply to base needs. Orks didn't have perverts. (Well, Da Boss was, but he didn't like to upset his Boyz.)

They watched with fascination at the movies set in places that never were, places of wizards and heroes and fantastical beasts and unearthly landscapes. For one thing, da Orks had been to tons of places like that. For another, they were damn cool.

They watched the documentaries and based-on-a-real-story movies; stories dedicated to people that didn't survive mass killings or movies about awful things that had happen and mustn't be forgotten. Clearly, there would be no shortage of stompin' to be done to make this world remember Da Right and Proppa.

And so on. They had so much more media to watch, and much time to do it in. It was, perhaps, a week or two after TV Time had begun. Orks had left to go to the bathroom and get more food or just got bored and left. They had stuff to do, and arranged a instinctive rotating schedule so that good work could be done, though none of them were aware of it. They were Orks, after all; organization was not something in their natures, every Ork simply decided to do something and it happened to work out.

Da Boss remained focused. He just kept watching, and it soon came to pass that a show that he'd been assured was really popular (based on what his Mek Boyz had found out from their glimpses of this planet's information network). A show about a whole ton of humie boyz and gurlz stuck on an island to do crazy stuff for tons of money. Then it was movie stuff, but that wasn't so good, and then all around da world on a plane which was better.

A show where the people, fighting for what they wanted so badly, scuffled amongst themselves. Used by the ruthless, only to snap back and go their own way. Where they resorted to the most outrageous and crazy things to beat the challenges thrown at them. (And there was singing.) Where they were forced to make one each other leave the game, but not always in a spirit of hatred or resentment. This was a show that told _stories; _stories of blooming love, whether one-sided or mutual. (Da Boss was interested in that.) Of enemies that became friends or at least mutual associates, crazy peopel that embraced the bonds of love and became happier for it. Of them evolving as people. Of struggling onward no matter the cost, of refusing to _ever _give up without a fight.

Da Boss kept his own thoughts. Some of them interested him more than the others. One boy in particular; small, brown-haired and not as good with da gurlz as he thought. 'Cody' didn't seem a proppa name for someone like him. A humie that hadn't seen how to be awesome yet. That didn't know about the spiral.

There was something about him. An instinct, the same that compelled him together together his Orks and beat morality into them and call them his brothers, was rising. This boy...da one with da spirit until he quietly broke for a long while...he didn't have anybody. Da Boss knew the signs. He didn't have a big bro to punch the sense back into him when he couldn't dig through the pain. He didn't used to have anyone to call up when things got frakked. And even now, he was still a bit alone where in counted deep down. No one believed in him, Da Boss knew.

Da Boss stirred. Now that...that was wrong. _Everyone _needed someone to believe in them.

His eyes narrowed and he grinned, watching him and dat big girl with da purple hair get close near da end. Maybe...dis boy had someone to believe in him. But dat wasn't enough.

That boy and dat gurl weren't the entirety of his thoughts. Through it all, Da Boss watched. Entranced, enthralled, enthusiastic. He had..._connected_ with these humies; his Boyz were surprised and intrigued, cool stuff happened when Da Boss liked people like that. They did not ask just why he found all this so interesting, for they were Orks and did not think as deeply as humans had. Indeed, they had no need to.

Da Boss himself had his own reasons. He knew the seeds of true awesomeness when he saw it. He knew where the Spiral might just be dug up, of great spirit lying buried in unaware hearts. Most of all, he saw..._potential_. These people he saw on the screen, acting without thought of script, only doing what came naturally and being so very _outrageous_...it was chaotic. It was wild. It was...

_Orky_.

As the last episode of the series closed, to the shock of all - a volcano was involved, and some _very _close escapes - Da Boss swore. "OY! Iz dat it? Are they DEAD?"

"Nawp," Said a Mek Boy, who'd checked the whole thing out when he figured out what Da Boss was up to. "Sez dat dey all went home after. Got hurt some, did some hospital stuff, but they're fine."

"Dat's good, then."

The Mek Boy grinned, a mouthful of overgrown teeth gleaming filthily. "An' get dis, Boss! They're doing _another _show!"

"_WOT!_"

The Mek Boy gave him the details. Da Boss thought quick. "_BOYZ!_" He said. "I gots some news for yaz! When we gets to dis here planet? _WE GOTS SOME HUMIES TO SHOW DA RIGHT AND PROPPA!"_

"We's gonna stomp 'im?"

"Wot? No! I means...means...shows 'em how ta _spin!_" Da Boss' spiral-eye gleamed, and spun on. Green static crackled around him. "Dis is important. We'z TAKING A SHORTCUT."

""WHOOO!" Da Boyz cheered.

So, over the course of a few days, stuff happened. Important stuff was tied down. Everyone's favorite squeaky toys were put in special vaults so nothing could happen to them. Da Mek Boyz made sure everything was up and running before Da Boss put foot to the Awesomeness Engine, spun on, and did his thing.

An observer would have seen green energy, spirit and resolve made physical, spin out from around the Ork's ship, revolve around and around until a double-helix warped space around them and made stuff happen.

The helix appeared to disappear into space; what it _actually _did is beyond the power of current science to describe, but a entertainingly inaccurate summery is that it shot into places beyond mere matter, where energies and thought were one, where tomorrow became the past. Places where potentiality was real and nothing else was. The helix, smashing through it all like a tidal wave in a kiddy pool, sought out the way to a very specific little planet that wasn't really that for, perhaps a few months away, but they were in a hurry.

It found something; two hearts, male and female and both really flippin' _weird _in their own ways, resounding with Da Boss in ways inexplicable and unknown. They were _afraid_. Fear was a gateway. There were _things _out there that would exploit that fear, climb up it like nightmare spiders and do such awful things.

But heroes also come when their people are so very afraid. Fear is the pathway for both monsters...and _saviors._

The helix found what it needed. And around the ship, it _spun_. And then, the ship was gone in a blast of green.

A flash of green, and they reappeared.

"_Boss_?" An Ork said over the universal intercom. (It's a spaceship, ya gotta have intercoms!) "_We'z gotta problem._"

"Oy, wot's dat!" Da Boss yelled from the little plug where he powered it everything with fighting spirit. "And why's everythin' gone all dark?"

"_Uh...we made's it, but there's a bit of a problem, see?_"

"And dat iz?"

"_We'z...kind really deep underground._"

Da Boss grunted. "...Well, we'z supposed to get to da planet. Not big a deal how deep we are, yeah? We just do what we always do: dig straight through until we win! Dat's da way my Boyz roll!"

The intercom roared with affirmation. Da Boss continued. "But we'z gotta be careful, see? Don't wanna crack da planet or somethin; how's we gonna bring 'em Da Right and Proppa den?"

Some Orks moaned in disappointment; breaking a planet like that was right fun. Other Orks, more in tune with the way the Boss thought, agreed with Da Boss completely. And others giggled at imaginary dragons getting drunk on butterflies, but they were Weird Boyz, they were just crazy.

In the darkness of the deep crust, flows of magma almost cooking them alive in their ship if not for Da Orks being unaware of them, drills extended from glowing green masses on the front of the ship. They spun onwards, and the ship gradually started to climb up.

"Dat's da way!" Da Boss shouted. "Keep movin'! Dig and dig until we're through! Go all da way to da surface! _Pierce through da underground with YOUR SPIRITS!_ TURN THOSE DRILLS INTO YOUR SOULS, and BREAK EVERYTHING IN YOUR WAY!"

"_YOU GOTZ IT!" _They roared.

Da Boss laughed. He had such _awesome _plans.

...

Somewhere in the middle of Canada, where the media would be completely oblivious to the important things going on there, a large and familiar group of people had assembled, compelled by the dread power of contracts and one man's vision of the wealth found in reality TV. (Also, the change to be a sadist.)

They should not, therefore, have been as easy in each other's company as most of them were (barring vendettas, past grievances and a small degree of general dislike). They had plotted against each other, used each other, and generally done unpleasant things over a prize that simply _refused to be won_. (Undoubtedly there was some greater power at work that wanted to drive them mad with frustration. Or Chris kept rigging everything, no one knew.)

In spite of that, outside the competition, they could still gather together and...well, not completely hate each other, really.

"Well, this isn't awkward at all," Noah said sarcastically; he was a bookish-looking young man of Indian descent, possibly from the Indian sub-continent as well. (Or Canada. No one but Sierra know for sure...) Around him was a small group consisting of Cody and Sierra (who, he noted wryly, seemed to be spending a _lot _of time together voluntarily) plus Owen, Izzy (who seemed to have patched things up with Owen, though they apparently weren't romantic anymore) and Beth.

Owen, a very large and rotund teen with blond hair and a amiable attitude that could drive a Necron to hippie-dom, tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

Noah pointed across the old take-off runway the bus had dropped them off upon and left, presumably awaiting whatever Chris was planning to annoy them with. Most of the campers (though contestants was probably a more accurate term, given that the island had been so long ago) had gathered into the familiar cliques and groups, based on who liked who and who dated who and, generally, who merely tolerated who, making an informal hierarchy.

But where there are alliances and friendships, there must also be vendettas. Some eliminations had been...harsh. Scars remained, and devious plots scarred deepest. And nowhere was there a rift deeper, filled with greater loathing and mutual dislike, than between Leshawna, the self-proclaimed diva, and Heather, who was essentially the kind of girl nerds and geeks that grow up into smartass writers hate. For reasons unknown, they had found a lot of boxes lying around the runway and arranged them into forts, glaring at each other through them.

"...Oh," Owen said. "Wow, they're still mad at each other? Why can't they just let it go?"

"Because they've been posessed by horrible brain parasites eating their brains, secretly from the dawn of time and fighting forever and forever over the most awesome cake ever!" Suggested Izzy, a rather manic redhead with an expression that would make a Chaos Cultist envious. (They had to practice hard.)

"Probably," Sierra said. "It's a sensible explanation."

"No it's not!" Beth, a short and wide-hipped sort of geeky girl said.

"It's not? Huh, no wonder it felt like logic had died listening to that."

Owen persisted. "I mean, sure, they've done tons of bad stuff to each other, but we've all messed with each other, right? Cody kept trying to vote Sierra out because she's really really really scary and doesn't know when to back off a little-"

Sierra glared at Cody. Cody whistled innocently and pretended that a cloud in the sky resembling a demon's-face was more interesting then all this.

"And Sierra teamed up with Alejandro because he tricked her into thinking he could help make your Niagra Falls marriage legal, and you voted me out..." Owen's face fell a bit. Cody frowned at Sierra, and Sierra flinched guiltily. "And you choked me with your legs once. You have really impressive lower body strength."

"She'd have to, from the size of her thighs," Noah said blandly. Sierra gave him such a Look.

"Um...would a apology make it better?" Sierra said heisitantly. She liked Owen. _Everybody _liked Owen. (Except Alejandro, but he hardly counted. Come to think of it, they hadn't seem him anywhere.)

"No," Noah said.

"Yes!" Owen said. "I mean, no?"

Sierra tilted her head to the side. "I'm really really really really sorry!"

"Aw!" Owen seized Sierra in a mighty hug. "I can't stay mad at you even if Noah says I should!"

"GROUP HUG!" Izzy said...and hugged a nearby rock. "It's my rock, hug your own. He is a rock, his name is Benito Sashloff, and he shall be my rock."

"You're squishy!" Sierra said, of Owen, giggling like a loony. (An accurate example, under the circumstances.)

"Aw, you say the nicest things!" Owen said.

A short distance away, Eva, Bridgette and Geoff (the later two not _quite _as paranoid of Eva as they used to be, owing to her calming down a bit) had gathered around a robot that had been on the bus for no apparent reason and hadn't done much aside from periodically wandering around and staring at Heather irately.

Eva, a large, strong and vaugely East European woman, glared at the robot, virtually daring it to react. "Eva?" Geoff said carefully. "Why, uh, why are you trying to stare down a robot?"

"That isn't even looking at you?" Bridgette, an easy-going girl with blond hair tied in a ponytail, said.

Eva looked at them for a long time. Bridgette, to her credit, only flinched a little. Geoff merely looked like he wanted to run and hide forever. Eventually, Eva said, "It's the robot from the Aftermath bit after Total Drama Action. What's it doing here, then?"

"...Maybe it wants to compete?" Geoff suggested, a blond teen wearing an inexplicable cowboy hat, grinning weakly.

Eva glared at him for making such a stupid joke. He cowered. She turned her attention back to the robot. "Chris had something to do with that robot. I'll bet you, it's going to kill us all or something."

"What's going on over here?" Courtney asked, wandering over, frustrated in her inability to just gel with one of the groups like the others had done (she wasn't particularly inclined to be around the loonies like Izzy and Sierra and those crazy enough to associate with them; it was a waste of time being around Gwen and Duncan even with DJ hovering around them to possibly ameliorate tempers; Lindsey and Tyler would kill braincells just by their proximity; Harold, Justin, Trent and their apparent groupies Katie and Sadie were avoiding her on purpose; Leshawna and Heather were too busy hating each other to even notice Courtney and that was pretty much it); since these guys weren't doing much to suggest disliking her, she went with it.

"Eva thinks the robot is evil and sent by Chris and out to kill us or something," Geoff said.

Courtney scoffed, secretly relieved that they didn't try to shoo her away or something. "That's ridiculous; there's no way Chris would put an evil robot to kill us, he wouldn't have a show if he did that."

"I feel I should be more disturbed that that is a more plausible answer than simply pointing out the immorality of killing us at all," Eva said.

"And yet none of us are surprised," Bridgette said.

Geoff picked up a stick and poked the robot. "Poke poke." The robot slowly turned it's head at him and stared for a moment; there was a disturbingly familiar intensity to that look, but it soon trundled off in Heather's general direction, seemingly uninterested in being harrassed.

"And it's going to kill Heather, probably," Geoff said.

"...That is a bad thing?" Eva said.

"Not's not the time to go not-good and such," Bridgette said, and followed after the robot. The others did too; it's not like they had anything better to do.

The robot stopped a short distance from Heather, surprising both Leshawna and Heather. It was, after all, a mysterious robot. That sort of thing gets your attention. "Is that the popularity robot from the Aftermath bits?" Heather, a tall and pretty Asian girl with a short ponytail, said.

"Looks like it," Agreed Leshawna, a curvy dark-skinned teen with a high ponytail and a slight air of haughty self-satisfaction. (Otherwise known as 'sassiness', but that's not as loquacious.)

"...What it's doing?"

Leshawna made that noise that people employ when they want to indicate that they don't know. "Just...sitting there. All ominous and brooding and grumpy-like."

"Huh." Heather glanced back at Leshawna and raised an eyebrow as the other girl shrugged. Then they remembered that they were supposed to hate each other and glared briefly and decided to forget it; the robot had spoiled the tension.

It became incredibly spoiled when the robot shifted, and spoke. _"Heather,_" it said, in a voice synthesized and distorted enough to be unrecognizable.

Heather choked. "It knows my name!"

"_You're doomed_!" Sierra called out; she and a few others had been made aware of Eva, Geoff, Bridgette and Courtney's thing about the robot (okay, it was just Eva's, but whatever), as Eva insisted on explaining it to everyone they encountered, which was everyone. "Evil robots will hunt you down and chase you forever and never ever ever leave you alone! Just like me."

Noah sighed and gave Sierra a dirty look. "You know, it's just not right for you to go around and steal my lines. It's hard to made appropiately sly and witty remarks when you won't let me use them."

"You're killing Noah's funny!" Owen complained. "That's not right."

"It is..._A SIGN!_" Cody wailed. "I knew it wasn't a figment of my imagination after Sierra told me it wasn't!"

Sierra added, "The stars have foretold it all! Someone really is screwed! The heavens themselves have foretold of this doom! Repent, repent and live your days in slightly ameliorated fear because at least you'll have a nice afterlife to look forward to after the horrible, _horrible _death in store for you! Find something! A rock - not Izzy's rock, it's her rock - or a stick or a minigun or a giant robot or a REALLY REALLY BIG DINOSAUR because it's better to go down fighting than beign a wuss! Because the stars gave me and Cody an OMEN!"

"Wait, wait," Said Duncan, a rougish-looking punk with a green mohawk, having wandered over. "This the same omen you and Cody say you saw?"

"Yes!"

"The stars spelling out that we're all going to die or something, right?"

"Well," Cody said. "Not _exactly_, but pretty much."

"In spite of _no one _else seeing this."

"Uh..."

"And that the stars doing something like that would spell catastrophic consequences for the entire planet," Harold, a lanky and redhaired nerd, pointed out, neglecting to mention that due to the lightspeed problem, the stars _couldn't _change so dramatically and briefly because the light simply couldn't travel from them fast enough.

"Well, yes..."

"And you know think they did that all because a robot is going to kill Heather - or all of us - for no apparent reason," Said Gwen, a pretty Goth girl with a streak of cyan in her dark hair.

"That'd be a _weird _thing for an omen to do," Courtney said. "If they existed. Which they don't."

Cody and Sierra glanced at each other. "Should we shun the non-believers?" Sierra asked.

"That never ends well," Cody said, shaking his head.

"Guys?" Heather asked. "A little help?" They stared at her. "...Okay, I just _know _someone's going to say something sarcastic about karma or poetic justice but I don't see how me manipulating my way through a competition to get a million dollars that _no one ever seems to get _qualifies me to get killed by a robot!"

"Disporportionate retribution?" Gwen suggested.

"HELP, NOW?"

Sierra shrugged. "Aw right. But first, we must ascertain the robot's true intentions!"

"Ah yes!" Harold said. "You're going to instigate a series of clever and subtle gambits to see how it reacts and pull a hypothesis from that?"

"...Not really, no," Sierra said, and ran over to the robot and banged on it's head from behind. "HEY! WHADDAYA WANT!"

"That works too," Cody said. "I guess."

The robot slowly turned around on it's tread. It waved it's arms and roared, in it's synthesized voice, "_CRUSH! KILL! DESTROY!_"

"I KNEW IT!" Sierra said.

"Only joking," The robot said, it's voice dimming and changing, returning to a more human tone of voice. A very..._familiar _voice.

Heather peered at it. "...Alejandro?"

The robot seemed to slump. "...Yes. It is I. Diminished and ruined, but nevertheless. I live."

"AL!" Owen said, running over and seizing him in a mighty hug that Sierra neatly sidestepped. (No one wants to be group hugged with a blocky robot.) "YOU'RE ALIVE! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD OR POSSESSED OR FED TO RADICAL GREEN PARTY FUNDAMENTALISTS VIA A INSTALLMENT PLAN! But you're alive! And...a robot."

"Yes," Alejandro said, a very clear note of irritation in his voice. "I'm alive. As I just pointed out."

"Yes," Noah said. "We get that point, you're alive after all-"

"Your apathy wounds me," Alejandro said.

"As I'm sure does everyone else that does dislike you for whatever reason. My point is, why are you a robot?"

"Chris put me into this thing."

"...What? He did?"

"Why would I say otherwise?"

"But..._why_?"

"I'm...not sure. Not at all."

"Well, on the negative side, you're a robot now," Sierra said. "On the plus side, at least you didn't become on in a really narmy and needlessly dramatic way!"

Alejandro shifted his eyes within the robot. "Yes. That is exactly what I did."

"Why did you shift your eyes just now?"

"How could you tell I did that!"

"My mom taught me how to delicately bend the fourth wall."

"_What._"

"Hi guys, what's going on?" Said Lindsey, a pretty and kindly if vapid-looking blond, as she wandered over.

"Alejandro's back and he's a robot!" Leshawna yelled at her.

"...What, seriously?"

"Seriously," Duncan said, looking like he could hardly believe it himself. "...And just like that, reality comes so close to jumping the shark."

"At least we didn't go back in time and chase Hitler with a grain thresher while he flees in a jetpack," Sierra said. "...What? It's on my to-do list."

"Really?" Izzy said. "My to-do list has the same thing, but kaiju instead of grain thresher."

"Ooh, good idea!"

The news spread quickly (Alejandro being a robot now, not Sierra's being even more of a loony than anyone thought); and reactions varied; generally, people that actually had met Alejandro during the World Tour were smugly pleased at what had befallen him, while those who had never had to deal with him but had seen his plots on reruns were satisfied. The kinder among them, like Cody, Beth, Trent, Owen or Bridgette, thought that this was too far; he'd done bad things yes, but that wasn't bad enough to warrant a volcano and becoming a robot. The less kind, such as Duncan, Leshawna or Eva, thought otherwise. Other's still were harder to gauge; Sierra, for instance, privately thought that this was some sort of karmic retribution. She often told Cody that she had _always _known that Alejandro was evil (she was, after all, very genre savvy) but hadn't used it against him because she'd known that he would get others eliminated and that served her plan to get Cody to win the million just fine. (Cody wasn't sure how seriously to take that. It sounded ridiculous on the surface, but then, Sierra did have her hidden depths...)

Heather, the one directly responsible for Alejandro being in this state, was...stunned. Almost, some dared to suggest, _sorry_. For his part, Alejandro didn't seem to bear her too much ill-will, for whatever reason. All was, apparently, fair in love and war. (Espicially when there did not appear to be a distinct difference between the two.)

The gloating, comforting or genial indifference was swiftly interrupted by a loud buzzing from Alejandro, like intercom static. "OW!" Alejandro said. "Why does it be so loud!"

"_Because it's funnier this way_," Chris' voice said cheerfully. "_Hold on a sec', is this thing on? Hello? Hello? You're all gonna die, the robot's programmed for killing..."_

"WHAT?" was the general response. (And Eva said, "I knew it!")

"_Hah, gotcha! Just kidding, the robot's just a robot."_

"Yes...on that note, why exactly did you put Alejandro in a robot?" Heather asked.

"_I think a better question is...why wouldn't I put him in a robot?"_

"Oh, sure, that's a perfectly good reasonYOU KNOW THAT'S NOT A REASON AT ALL!"

"_Geez, touch_y_! Grow yourself a sense of humor while you're at it. And longer hair. Also, some sort of freakish mutation. That would be AWESOME."_

"I have become a walking intercom for a fiendish sadist," Alejandro said flatly. Well, a bit more flatly than his synthezier-distorted voice normally conveyed. "This is officially a new low."

"_Can be any lower than putting up with Owen_."

"You speak truly."

"Hey!" Owen said, hurt.

Noah gave Sierra a significant look and the two of them patted Owen's shoulders. (Sierra had an easier time of it because of her height.) "You still have us," He said.

"Yeah!" Sierra said, trying to get on Owen's good side. (This was not a very hard thing to do, really.) "We're reality buddies!"

"Woo!" Owen said with a grin. He spread his arms.

"No hugs," Noah warned him.

"Awww." Owen slumped a bit, but still smiled.

"_Aw, isn't that sweet, no one cares. Geez, you'd think no one knew that you're not supposed to get along in stuff like this,_" Chris complained.

"Actually," Duncan said. "If everyone's backbiting and backstabbing and hateful, no one will want to watch because they don't have anyone to root for or identify with." Sierra and Harold stared at him. "What? I'm not allowed to be genre savvy?"

Gwen cleared her throat. "All right," She said to Chris through Alejandro. "What are you doing now? What sort of horrible things are you going to do to us now? Bring us to a hotel and stick us there until we go crazy?"

"It wasn't a good idea with dirtbags and it won't be a good idea with us," Noah said.

Gwen went on. "Force us to destabilize a small African country for fun and profit?"

"It's not actually that fun," Izzy said knowingly. Wisely, they chose not to respond to this.

Trent picked up the thread. "Stick us in an abandoned underground city and watch us slowly go crazy from claustrophobia and hope that the ensuing horrors will get attention?" He paused, and added, "Crazier, I mean?"

"Do some sort of World Tour again, only in specific countries for longer and even more dangerous challenges so we actually DO die?" Harold said.

"Sacrifice us all to your dark and vile gods to add to your inexplible appeal and power?" Sierra said darkly. She got her share of looks. "...There's gotta be a reason my mom likes him. The only possible explaination is sporadic satanic sucking-up."

"That's the most needlessly eloquent referral to deals with the Devil I've ever heard!" Beth said.

"_Uh, no,_" Chris said, sounding thoughtful. "_But good ideas, all the same. Thanks for the inspiration._"

"DAMN IT!" They said.

"_What I actually have in mind is a bit more...awesome. It involves air travel. Again._"

"But I blew up the plane!" Sierra said, sounding inexplicably proud.

"_...Yes. You did. I REMEMBER._"

"Why do you sound upset that no one pointed it out right away?" Courtney asked her.

"Because I _blew up a plane!_" Sierra said excitedly. "On accident, but, hey, a plane! Blowing up! Am I the only one impressed by that?"

"_Sometimes, you scare me almost enough to overwhelm my utter loathing for you_," Chris said cheerfully. "_I'm tired of talking to you losers, so direct your attention to the falling intern from above!_"

Cody blinked. He looked around, as if interns might suddenly fall down and kill them all on impact. Nothing happened. "Uh. What intern?"

And then a big metal sphere fell from directly above them and smashed in their midst, narrowly missing Sadie and Katie and giving Justin quite a scare. (He panicked a bit about undue stress doing bad things to his complexion.) The ground cracked, dust billowed up, and there was an unscrewing sound. Amid everyone's coughing, choking (from Cody and Harold) and no small amount of outraged yelling, a metal lid hit the ground.

The dust cleared, and the contestants saw that out of the metal sphere had appeared a politely annoyed intern with a inappropiately stoic lack of reaction to showing up this way. "Well, that was needlessly life-threatening," Rossiu said. "Both me and them."

"_I know. Ain't it great_?" Chris laughed. "_Take it away, Yinsid!"_

"Rossiu."

_"Whatever. Give them the straight and stuff._" The intercom feed cut out, with a brief electrionic shriek.

Rossiu sighed and stepped out of the sphere, walking in such a way that he held his hands behind his back, stiff-backed and proper. "At least it's not as alarming as the last time I was shot out of a cannon," He said to himself.

"Uh, who are you?" Gwen said. She was vaugely aware that he was an intern, from his uniform; but she had certainly never seen him before, and anyway, none of them had paid much attention to them anyway. Interns had a nasty habit of vanishing horribly. But this guy...something about him was different. And it wasn't that he looked younger than any of them, even Cody.

The intern looked up at them. He had a way of standing that made his relatively goofy uniform look more severe and serious than a cardinal's robes. "My name, though I suspect introductions are completely pointless, is Rossiu."

"Yeah?" Duncan said, uninterested. "And?"

Rossiu sighed. "And...against my wishes...I am the one who will be the sole holder of every truly significant duty relating to the T.D. Awesome."

Geoff peered at him. "...The wha?"

Rossiu pointed up. They looked up and saw, to their astonishment, an airship.

An actual airship, too far away for them to have noticed but getting closer floating down to the runway; a modified zeppelin-type of blimp, more streamlined than the usual sort, the envulope colored bright red and some sort of black flame-shaped design hastily removed (inexpertly, too), and an almost palatial and baroque series of swooping points and curves at the front that looked vaugely flamelike.

They stared, eventually, Leshawna said, "That's an airship. Why is there an airship?"

"I am not altogether certain," Rossiu said flatly.

"...O-kay...wait, I thought he barely had any budget to replace the plane, nice bit there Sierra-"

"Thank you!" Sierra said brightly.

"So how did he afford to buy an AIRSHIP!"

"Espicially one that shouldn't be flying with all that extra metal on it," Cody said. Harold raised an eyebrow. "Steampunk enthusiast! I know how these things ought to work."

Rossiu's eye twitched gently. He considered a moment and said, as though he'd rehearsed it, "I'm not at liberty to explain anything. Mr. MacClain has had absolutely NO use of secret government technology relating to opening gateways between other worlds that CERTAINLY DO NOT EXIST, and he most certainly did not steal decommioned airships previously in use by a imperalist nation very similar to Imperial Japan that stood down in it's hostilities. He also did not blackmail a number of talented engineers to retrofit it so we could operate it in lieu of the pyrokinetic abilities of it's original designers, and he certainly did not do all this with the tacit approval of the government, which relies on this reality TV series far more than the world currently knows." Rossiu closed his eyes, and the corner of his mouth quirked in satisfaction. "Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss anything."

They stared at him. "...Huh," Cody said.

"I knew other worlds existed!" Harold said.

"And that the government is using them to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!" Izzy said. ("OF COURSE!" Sierra said.)

Most of the others just stared at him. "You didn't...hurt yourself on the head when you landed, did you?" Gwen asked kindly.

Rossiu tilted his head. "No, I don't believe so. Why?"

"Um..."

"Because you fell out of the sky and could have gotten hurt!" Beth said quickly.

Rossiu nodded. "Ah, of course. Your concern is welcomed, but I'm perfectly all right. This isn't the first time I've been shot out of a cannon."

"...They shot you out of a cannon?" Sadie, a energetic and rather big Asian girl that was somehow nearly identical to her skinnier dark-skinned friend Katie, said faintly.

"Yes. Yes they did. I assume there was a reason." Rossiu shrugged, as if it didn't matter to him one way or the other.

"I call bullshit," Duncan said bluntly. "That...that little story, right there? About the other worlds and stuff? Yeah. That was completely insane. You need help, kid."

"I get that a lot, yes," Rossiu said, completely serious. "And I must immediately point out that I most certainly do _not _have a history of psychotic episodes, chainsaw manias or inappropiate obsessions with drills and how they can pierce a squishy human body."

Alejandro stared at him, presumably. "...Is that so," He said.

"Yes. You might be surprised by how often that point has to come up in job interviews. None of that ever happened, except for a minor case of the drill thing but no one died and they dropped the charges eventually. People make such odd assumptions."

"...Aren't you a little young to have job interviews?" Heather said.

"Assuredly." Rossiu stared up politely at her. She found it hard to return his gaze. He wasn't feeling her up with his eyes or trying to challenge her or anything like that; Rossiu was a _weird _kid.

"...I like him!" Sierra said brightly.

"Yeah, you're alright!" Cody told Rossiu.

"Thank you," Rossiu said.

The airship loomed, approaching. Vast and slightly ominous, and the question of just what it was for occupied their minds.

"...So, just out of curiosity, I don't suppose there's many other guys to pilot that thing?" Noah said.

"We have some, yes," Rossiu said. "Mr. MacClaine and the others are...elsewhere. Until our destination is reached, and the show begun in earnest, the other interns roped into this horrorshow shall be running the airship and tending to your needs." He bowed a bit, unexpectedly. "All under my supervision, orders and command."

If he had added _of course_, like a blowhard, he might have been hated for it. Like he was enjoying the prospect of power, maybe trying to impress them or suggest that he deserved that petty power. But the way he said it like it was inconsequential to the real task at hand, an afterthought, that was more than a little odd.

"Um, good," Gwen said uncertainly. "I guess."

"'Needs'?" Owen said hopefully. "That wouldn't include a breakfast buffet, would it?"

DJ looked incredulously at him. "It's nearly twelve in the afternoon!"

"...A really late breakfast?"

"Yes, I already had one prepared warm prior to my arrival," Rossiu said.

"WHOO HOO!"

"...Okay, maybe this won't be so bad," Noah said reluctantly.

Rossiu looked almost pitying. "For your sake..._I really hope so_."

"Okay, a bit worried about that!" Lindsey said. "I'm worried about that. Is anyone else worried about that, because I'm really worried about that!"

DJ shuddered. "Oh man, this is gonna kinda suck, isn't it?"

"Probably," Alejandro agreed. "...Perhaps someone could let me out of this robot? No? Perhaps? Aw well, it was a nice try."

...

_The tides of the Warp searched._

_Intentions and designs foul and inhuman both sought for a means in._

_It did not matter where that would lead them. It was simply enough to FIND; a fresh new world innocent of Chaos, with so many unwary and virgin minds fresh for it to TWIST._

_A crack; unrelated to that which the Orks had used. The power of the Spiral was anathema to Chaos; it was born of things it could not use, though it was born of emotion and drive and determination: stuff Chaos could use, but the spirit bent it into something...bright. Glorious. Terrible._

_No, Chaos always found it's own way._

_And the gaps were already there. Something unwise had been done, vainglorious and foolish. Already, this unassuming world had BREACHED to other worlds, and closed the gates might be, GAPS had been left._

_Chaos rolled with it's own tides; peculiar whims and inclinations defying reason or sensibility. It was, after all, Chaotic. For whatever reason, Chaos flowed not into the world where the spirits graced humans with the nature of the elements, but into the world that had breached, the world of humans unknowing and unhindered by the rotting carcass that dared to call itself the Imperium of Man. The people of this world had no fear or faith of the Carrion-God of the Imperium._

_Nothing to stop the gods of Chaos from rolling over it, so many dark and eldritch things to do their will, and no shortage of loyalists to obey._

_Even if there had been, that would have not stopped the unstoppable roll of Chaos. The gods would not be denied their prize._

_This world would soon BELONG to the Immaterium, and fall into the Warp._

_A thing that was valor unrestrained and in excess until it was only sheer bloodlust peered upon this world of humanity. So many weak humans, waiting for HIM and his champions._

_Khorne made his will known, and his champions followed._


	3. It Gets Worse, Then Come The Orks

Disclaimer: I do not own Total Drama Island/Action/World Tour, Warhammer 40,000 or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann or any other copyrighted properties.

...

The airship was huge, looming over them, and as they walked up the ramp that had been extended from it for them, the Total Drama kids had a certain unnerving feeling that they were walking into the belly of a beast, insatiable and monstrous.

Rossiu led the way. He was short and slight, but he walked like he was a stone in the world, immovable and unchanged by anything around him. His footsteps were surprising heavy on the metal, and he walked with an self-posession odd in someone so young, his arms crossed behind his back. "Come along," He said, and it was so polite that it was hard to hear the order underneath.

Duncan heard it, though, and he stomped along with the resentment and grouchiness that implied that he would quite happily shove Rossiu off the airship in midair if he got the chance. He glared at the younger boy's back, frowning faintly when he saw his shirt pull from his neck enough to reveal the edges of faint burn scars, ragged and vicious, going down his back.

Gwen pulled up next to him. "What's with you?" She asked him.

"I don't like this kid," Duncan hissed to her. "There's something _weird _about him. What kind of kid talks like a grammer book?"

"The kind of kid that plays with Legos when all the other kids wanted to go for the slides?" Gwen guessed. "He seems the type. Bigger question, how did a kid end up in charge here?"

Duncan nodded. "Something _weird's _going on here. This doesn't feel like the other seasons, you know? Chris is screwing with us worse than usual and I don't like it."

"You don't like anything."

"I like you," Duncan said, with unabashed and unthinking honesty.

"Smooth," Noah said from somewhere behind him.

Duncan turned around, about to smack him one, thinking otherwise when he saw Noah walking just a bit behind Sierra, who gave him a suspicious look. Duncan had learned better than to treat a girl as weaker just because she was a girl (mainly due to Courtney kicking his ass in season two) and Sierra was a lot bigger than him; Noah smirked at him from behind Duncan, practically daring him to go through Sierra.

"We have a schedule to keep," Rossiu said coldly.

Duncan whirled around and kept walking. "Don't you order me around, kid. You might work here, but I'm a _contestant_. I'm the one this whole thing revolves around; you're just a placeholder for it to work, got it?"

Rossiu didn't even bother to look at him. "And what makes you think this is like the other seasons?" He asked softly, with the hint of a threat behind it.

That stopped Duncan dead in his tracks for a moment. The others caught up momentarily, and he briefly overhead Geoff say, "Oh man, I do _not _like the sound of that..."

Rossiu did not respond.

...

The ramp eventually led into what had, unknown to any of them or even Chris, once been a bomb bay; the floor had been replaced with something sturdier and lots of fancy floor tiling, and the walls strung with big cheerful banners that said _Welcome To Hell! _which didn't really fit the happy vibes. A few other interns were waiting there, dressed like waiters or stewardesses and generally looking utter apathetic, standing at attention behind a large serving buffet of many assorted breakfasting foodstuffs; pancakes, bacon, sasauge, dry cereal, muffins, waffles, and more, smelling so good it was physically painful not to be closer to the delicious food. On a nearby table was an slightly smaller selection of beverages like fruit drinks of many varieties, milk, tea, coffee, hot chocolate...Rossiu had gone quite a ways to make a good breakfast banquet.

"...Hrm," Alejandro said, reluctantly impressed. "That's quite a lot of food. A pity I can't have any, what with _being trapped inside a robot_."

"Then how have you been feeding yourself?" Katie asked, horrorified.

"You're better off not knowing, it's distressingly medical and invasive."

"_Chris is evil!_" Katie and Sadie cried.

"Duh!" Sierra said, with a great big helping of hypocritical humor. (It had taken Chris essentially leaving her to die before she'd gotten the message. The poor girl was too dense for her own good.)

"You do realize you have a food hatch built in, right?" Harold said. "I can see one right there."

"What, really?" Heather said. "I don't see one."

"Where is it!" Alejandro said desperately. "I've spent months surviving on intraveneously supplied nutrients! I crave _food!_"

Harold made a point of looking away. "Oh look at that. Something more interesting that whatever I was talking about."

"...You're still annoyed about me tricking you into commiting elimination suicide, aren't you?" Alejandro asked.

"Hrm? No, actually, but I _am _annoyed about you pushing Leshawna into going beserk! And then bragging about it. Through _song_. Gosh, you're sick."

"I'm not sick, I'm simply efficient."

"Also completely alone and friendless," Cody said spitefully.

"...That's unusually harsh of you..."

"_YOU PUSHED HIM INTO A LAKE OF MAN-EATING SHARKS, YOU SOCIOPATH!_" Sierra yelled, raising a fist in furious indignation. Harold, Trent, Geoff, Gwen, Noah and everyone else that even slightly liked Cody or at least had a functioning moral compass gave Alejandro the dirtiest looks ever.

"This," Noah said sternly. "Is what's known as pop schlock culture karma applied in a short-term sense. You try to get someone killed for a cheap advantage in a _reality TV show _and now you're in a robot with no breakfast for you. Sucks to be you."

Duncan added, "And look at all the shit we just just do not give."

"Oh, _come on!_" Alejandro said. "_You _threw a dingo at him! He fell down a cliff! And yet no one's harraunging you."

"Uh, he _slugged _me?" Duncan pointed out. "It was revenge, everybody's totally cool with that."

"I'm not!" Cody said.

"Me either!" Sierra said, giving Duncan a look that promised a vengeance he would never forget. A vegeance terrifying and awesome in it's scope and vastness, vengeance so awful and monstrous that future avengers would look back and say things like "Well, I may have destroyed my village because they forced my beloved brother into killing my entire family and pushed me into an awful cycle of vengeance culminating me in killing _EVERYONE _in that village unto the bacteria in the dirt, yea, and also the algae in the lakes thereof, but I can still feel good about myself because that's still not as bad as what Sierra did to Duncan." It was a vengeance that would make Duncan very said indeed. He would probably cry, and Sierra would collect his tears and rub them in his papercuts so the salt would hurt extra. (It would be vengeance well in excess of unreasonable. Never underestimate the wrath of a smitten teenage girl gradually develouping her girlish crush into something more meaningful.)

"Uh," Duncan said. "...Crap."

"Hey, what, we can't get our hate on either!" Eva demanded, glaring fiercely at the world in general. It had pissed her off by lurking suspiciously.

"And I _KNOW _we haven't settled a thing!" Leshawna announced, glaring at Heather.

"You knocked out my tooth and beat me stupid when I was trying to warn you about Alejandro!" Heather retorted. "It is so FAR from settled!"

"Gothy!" Courtney said, pointing at Gwen.

"Great," Gwen said deadpan. "I get the angry one who actually did a song that more or less involved wishing me dead."

"Yeah, you're getting a lot of sympathy from people over that," Sierra told her.

"Hey, you were _helping _her with that song! You gave a really creepy line too, something about subverted nursery rhymes?"

"Um...uh...I thought you were a rival for Cody's affections at the time, I was harboring deep rage issues?"

Gwen worredly looked at Cody, who looked politely at her. Gwen observed that Cody was standing _very _close to Sierra, within handholding distance, and didn't seem at all aware of the implications, and if he was he surely didn't mind. "Then...good thing that's a problem anymore, right?"

Sierra glanced at Cody and grinned at Gwen, as if to say _What do YOU think?_

Gwen sighed in relief, a relief that was shortly broken by Courtney flatly saying, "I'll NEVER FORGIVE YOU."

"Did you know that's a very dire insult in Japanese, owing to the restrained nature of the language?" Harold remarked.

"NO ONE CARES!" Justin yelled unexpectedly.

"Dude, you're supposed to not be evil anymore!" Trent told him angrily.

Beth gasped. "You're not supposed to mention stuff like that! We agreed on it!"

Justin ignored her. "Oh, you're mad? What are ya gonna do to get over it, count to nine!"

"Better then eight, that has dire occult significance," Noah muttered to Sierra, who nodded fiercely. (They both had a surprising interest in comic fantasy novels.)

Trent's usual cool broke just a little bit. "You jerkass."

"You got all mean and arrogant when you were a host and stuff!" Lindsay said, pointing at Geoff. "You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"YOU CHRIS CLONE!" Eva shouted.

Geoff gasped. "That was uncalled for! Besides, that happened during Total Drama Action. I don't believe that season even happened sometimes."

Tyler and Lindsey gasped. "Shun the non-believer! Shun! _Shuuun!_"

"...What?"

Eva whirled around on Izzy. "And YOU! You sold all our secrets to HER!" She pointed at Sierra.

"Yep," Izzy said proudly.

"YOU PSYCHO! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID! WHEN THAT INFO GOT THE INTERNET, ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!"

"True, it did," Sierra said. "Mostly because of me. Sorry."

Eva ignored her, and DJ said, "YOU MADE THE FLAMES WARS SO MUCH WORSE!"

"Worse..." Izzy said. "Or _better_?"

DJ thought about it. "Um. Worse. Yeah, definitely worse."

Sierra nodded. "There are some 'fans' that are even worse than _me_." There was a mutual gasp of horror from all around.

"And you!" Eva said, whirling around on Bridgette, who cowered in abject terror. "_You're TOO NICE! WHAT'S YOUR ANGLE!_"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Bridgette said.

"YOU TWO ARE EVIL INCARNATE!" Beth wailed at Alejandro and Heather. "NEVER HAVE BABIES OR WE'LL ALL _DIE FROM CONCENTRATED __**EVIL!**_"

_"What,_" Alejandro and Heather said.

"Stop being a creepy hive mind and poor judges of character!" Sierra told Katie and Sadie. They gasped.

"ALL OF YOU, STOP BEING MEAN!" Owen cried desperately.

"YOU!" Harold said, pointing at Rossiu. "Wait, you're not even in the game and we've never met, why am I yelling at you?"

"...I don't know," Rossiu said as the arguing escalated around him to a dangerous extent; he suspected a fight was about to break out. He sighed and rolled up his sleeves, prepared to stop it. "Yes, you're all overly emotional dysfunctional children with grievance issues, can we move on?"

Everyone stopped, staring at him. "'Children'?" Leshawna said incredulously. "You're younger than _Cody!_"

"Hey!" Cody said. "I'm not that young!"

"Actually, you are," Sierra said matter-of-factly. "...Sorry."

"Darn. Wait, how old are _you_?"

"Older than you," Sierra said evasively.

"Oh man, you guys are just _awesome!_" Chris said from a nearby monitor no one had noticed, having turned on just in time to watch the arguing. "Seriously! Completely forgetting all the bonding and friendships you made just so you can obsess over the little nitpicky issues you have? Awe-some. You're all ratings goldmines!" He paused. "Seriously, though, how old _are _you, Sierra? 'Cause Cody looks enough like a little kid next to you, that's creepy. Good wish fantasy fodder for all the little short fanboys in the watching audience, but _creepy_."

They paused, and froze. "How long have you been watching this?" DJ asked cautiously.

"Long enough!" Chris chose that moment to cackle ominously. "This is gonna make some great footage, you know?"

"...Aw man," Trent said unhappily.

"Creepy?" Sierra said, aghast. "_Creepy?_ Our friendship isn't creepy, is it Cody?"

"Given that you stalked and practically molested him the entire season until he did a total flip because you're the one person in the world who actually cares enough to remember his birthday, plus you're so big he actually _does _look a lot like a little kid next to you sometimes...yeah," Duncan said. "Kinda is."

Sierra slumped in dismay. "No...no it's not..." Cody and Izzy gathered behind her and group-hugged her to raise her spirits. So mighty was their group hug that it did the trick right away, all thoughts of creepiness banished to the back of Sierra's mind where she could brood about them later. (Hugs are the natural enemy of wangst. This is why people with personal space issues have a lot of emotional problems sometimes.)

"So!" Chris said. "Time to get this show on the road, y'know?"

"Joy," Noah said. "I suppose this is the moment where we do some sort of inane challenge to seperate us into different teams. Or do you just split us based on demographic appeal and whatever broad sterotypes people ascribe to us?"

"Hrm, good ideas," Chris said thoughtfully. "But NAH! There ain't gonna _BE _any teams this time!"

"What."

"Or challenges!" Chris grinned fiendishly. "Well, not _official _ones..."

"_What._"

"And hell, I can't wait to see your faces so I just gotta say it! This airship, or really, _surviving _living on it with people that hate you? _THAT'S THE CHALLENGE OF THE FIRST PART OF THE GAME!_"

"_WHAT._"

"I echo his flat what!" Owen said. "All of that sounds kind of...not good. Painful kind of not-good."

"This is gonna suck, isn't it?" DJ asked mournfully.

"In what way is this airship a challenge?" Courtney asked suspiciously.

"Because the whole thing has savage animals and Ezekiel running around, and nearly every single part of it has been rigged to _hurt you_," Chris said cheerfully.

"...You suck so bad," Geoff said flatly.

"Says the guy in a cowboy hat! Aaanyway...here's the deal! No eliminations. No teams besides what you do yourselves. No challenges besides just staying alive against all the crap I can throw at you! And no rules, NOTHING to stop you doing whatever you want, provided you don't mind doing it while being FILMED and televised around the world! All until you reach the site the airship's heading for! Maybe the survivors get to split the million. Maybe that's where the next part of the season happens. Or maybe I'll stick you all in an island inhabited by monsters and give the viewing audience all the carnage they can handle! _Have fun thinking about that_."

"You...can't!" Courtney stammered. "You CAN'T! There's NO WAY THAT'S LEGAL! You've put us through dangerous stuff, but...but...you can't just start _actively TRYING TO KILL US!_ That's like every human rights violation ever! My lawyers...they have to...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!"

"Hum, good points!" Chris said from the monitor, grinning like an jerkass. "Maybe I could say somethings. Maybe I could say that, I don't know, those things are legal in Canada but right now you're in _international waters _where there are no laws and we can do whatever we damn please to you. Maybe as of now your contracts strip you of all legal consideration as human beings and you're now property of the show to do with as we want. Maybe the mass media is so powerful that the legal system takes a flying hike next to what people want to see televised, even a glorified snuff series like what's probably gonna happen here. Who knows?"

"You're actually trying to _kill us?_" Sierra said faintly. "You...you can't...of all the things I've..." She stiffened, something in her breaking. "...You _complete monster_."

"...We'll just clone you or something," Chris said, after a moment, a brief look of uncertainty crossed his features. "No big deal."

"YES IT IS!" They shouted.

"You're so self-centered!" Chris complained. "...Anyway, soon as you're done eating that food the new intern, Wilfred or whatever-"

"Rossiu," Rossiu said automatically.

"Yeah, whatever, soon as you're done with that, those doors at the other end of the room?" THey noticed those doors, big sealed vault-type doors, and also a furious pounding coming from the other sides. "Well, food time over, DOORS OPEN. And then fun time begins! And by 'fun time' I mean 'suckage time'. For you guys. For me and the audience, it's gonna be awesome."

"Yay," The interns said apathetically.

"My heart is so full of joy now," Rossiu said monotonously.

Chris laughed at the interns. (And Rossiu.) "Man, it is so _awesome _having human beings I can treat as my personal property. They should totally make a thing out of that."

"They did, it's called slavery," Harold said. "It's generally frowned upon, man!"

"Nah, I mean something completely different. Not sure what, but, y'know, different." Chris paused. "So, anyway, try to make this awesome, 'kay? Bye." His monitor blipped out, going black.

They stared at it for a long time. "...This is gonna suck so bad," Noah lamented.

"Yeah, probably, but _free food _is right over there!" Owen said.

"Yeah..."

"_FREE FOOD, LITTLE BUDDY!_"

Noah rolled his eyes. "Oh, if you insist." He and Owen went over to the buffet table.

Sierra crossed her arms and 'huff'ed. "That does it! Cody, I will not stand for this anymore!"

"You mean being a pawn of a media empire that wouldn't care less about your physical or psychological well-being as long as you entertain people?" Cody suggested. "Or Chris, I don't know, being a jerk and fooling people into thinking he's not?"

"Well, yeah, those things, but I meant the most important thing! I don't have a cute nickname for you as your friend!"

"Wha?"

"From now on, you're _my LITTLE BUDDY!_" Sierra declared.

Cody blinked up at Sierra. "...Okay?"

"I DECLARE TODAY THE FESTIVAL OF DEVOURING!" Sierra cried, grabbing Cody, throwing him over her shoulder and rushing off for the buffet, the little guy taking it in stride.

Owen saw her coming and, his arms loaded with plates, somehow managed to high-five her. "I know! We can be nickname buddies!"

"Score!" Sierra said.

Noah and Cody caught each other's eyes and shrugged before Sierra twirling away, taking Cody with her. "Meh," They said, both of them content on their somewhat overbearing friends.

The others started gravitating towards the buffet, figuring that if suckiness was about to ensue they might as well make the most of it, while trying to ignore the people they hated and think about the fact that their argumenting of several minutes ago was going to be played around the world and make them all look like vindictive idiots. (It was quite strange how they had all blown up like that out of nowhere. It was quite _chaotic_, actually.)

Except for Alejandro, who suffered for his sins by being unfed and snubbed by everyone except Owen, who still liked him because Owen was cool that way. Alejandro did not much appreciate this, for he was a bit of a jerkass.

...

A week later, an event of mythic scales was occuring in an small fishing village near the coast of Southern Africa was happening, unseen and unknown until now except for some very odd blips on seismic sensors. (It would have been sooner, but Da Boss was wary about breaking the planet by smashing up the tectonic plates too much and anyway they had a brief altercation with mole people, that delayed them a lot.)

A pair of fisherman, one significantly taller and broader than the other, were dragging the end of one massive net along one side of the lake they drew most of their livelihood from, the other end of it already set into place for them to start sieving up fish from the lake and possibly junk that had ended up there. "It would be _such _a shame if aliens suddenly appeared and frightened us all," Said the taller one, whose name was Bishop, a descendant of British colonists who had gotten bored with the colonies and had literally gone native.

The smaller man, who was named Wilkus and was unaware of the unimportant fact that he was one of the last surviving descendants of a tribe of natives who had been assimilated in the general cultural change that had swept over Africa, gave him an odd look. "Er, yes, I suppose so. Unfortunate, I guess."

Bishop grunted. "Yes. It would be." He didn't sound like he meant it. "Really. It would be an utter _tragedy _if aliens appeared. Right now. Right here and now. Boom, out of nowhere, aliens."

Wilkus gave him a look, but Bishop stopped ranting, so he left it at that; he was used to behavior like that. They went back to work for a while, passing the time with idle small-talk. The net was put into place and fishing was done. Eventually, Wilkus said, "What's up with you and aliens all of a sudden?"

Bishop gave him a look. "...Because an alien invasion would be _exciting_."

"Huh?"

"Don't you see, I'm _bored_! There's nothing to do here but fish and farm and other little village-y things that suggest we're only here as a pageholder in the big narrative convention of the cosmos! I crave intellectual stimulation! The pump and thrust of adrenaline! _Not being bored stupid!_"

"...You could just move. There's a port city down that-a-ways."

"Are you crazy? Old man Poulkus from Greece has been eying my place for weeks. Like hell I'm gonna move and let him steal my house. It has a bay window, you know. Any idea what that man would do with my bay window? I don't know and I'm keeping it that way."

Wilkus said nothing. He felt a faint trembling from underground, but dismissed it as something minor.

"Now aliens, aliens would be an acceptable compromise between maintaining my stake in this community and genuine excitement! It would an interesting diversion, at the very least."

"You might _die_," Wilkus said. The subterranean trembling was getting louder, and some of the pebbles and stones underfoot were rattling around. "Or at least be greatly inconvienced. Aliens aren't known for being polite about showing up in the movies."

"Well, at least I wouldn't be bored. I might be on fire, or vaporized, or incubating their young in a terrifyingly biological manner, or have to slow-dance with them, but I wouldn't be bored."

"I'm reasonably certain that in moments like that, you'd wish desperately that you were bored again."

"Hah, shows what you know about me! I never take back anything I say!"

Wilkus leaned forward a bit and grinned. "Like when those super-intelligent gorillas wandered into town and you called one of them a monkey?"

"...We promised never to speak of that again. And besides, after my legs healed they got a lot more limber. I can do splits now! My arms still hurt when I hear monkey noises, though."

"Hoo-hoo hah," Wilkus said, imitating monkey noises.

"Hey, stop that!"

Wilkus hooted some more, so focused on this he didn't see the cracks appearing in the ground.

"Seriously, knock it off!"

"Hoo hoo, ooh-ah-AH!"

"Okay, now you're just being a jerkass."

Wilkus would have kept on screwing with his friend, as is the natural behavior of all truly dependable friendships, except that he took a step at the wrong moment and could _feel _the ground rumbling, a dull roar just under his feet (and the sound of metal grinding against stone like...drills?) and he said, "Wait, do you hear that?"

Cracks appeared in the ground as beams of brilliantly warm green light shone forth, bits of it pulling up and fall over, larger fissures growing around them in neat patterns around the lake. (And also appeared to be making the shape of a spiral.) "Yep," Bishop said. "Definitely do." He glanced at Wilkus. "So. Earthquake?"

"I don't think earthquakes work like this!" Wilkus said, before he tripped, the ground under him suddenly giving in; Bishop grabbed him before Wilkus could topple over into a particular larger fissure filling up with water as the lake spilled into it, diffusing the green light somewhat. "Oh no," He said in a quiet, horrified voice. "The fish. _GET THE FISH!_"

Bishop did just that, locking down the truck that the fish containers had been loaded into, and not a moment sooner, because a chance rumble opened another fissure that would have taken the fish with it. They had more immediate concerns, though, what with the sudden earthquake or whatever it was.

They both got into the truck, the ground cracking and buckling under their feet and starting to _bulge up_, like there was some gigantic animal burrowing to the surface under their feet. "Damn it, this had better not drain the lake!" Wilkus said; that lake was one of their most productive fishing spots, if it drained, it would _severely _hurt their economic well-being and right now that was tauntamount to a death sentence.

Wilkus had spoken at the wrong moment; as dirt started fountaining up, exploding out of the ground by some incredibly pressure, there was a tremendous blast of _noise_ that actually knocked the truck over sideways, just out of the way of a blast of water precipiating the entire _lake _exploding upwards in a thunderous blast of green-

A huge metal shape had erupted from the lake bed, tearing it apart and flying straight up. Wilkus would later have time to remember those few moments of terrified incomprehension and realize that was what had happened, but then, all he saw was vaugeness: the cracking and tearing of the ground under him, and then the lake, the source of his livelihood, all the water in it shooting up as something huge came screaming out, burning with a green light pounding out from every sqaure inch like an emerald sun, the water arcing high over head and spreading out and finally smashing down _just behind _them, missing them by feet and nearly flipping the truck around. If it hadn't been for several large rocks behind them, the water would have probably shoved them and lost them all the fish.

More fish were falled down around them, raining down and smacking off the ground and then flopping around. They seemed to be taunting Wilkus.

Bishop blinked. "...Huh."

Wilkus stared. More specifically, he was staring at the torn and shredded remains of the lake, now a mass of upturned dirt and large rocks, and all the fish flopping around and dying on the ground, the water flooding back into the lake but not nearly fast enough.

Bishop was about to say something out, but he glanced into the sky and his jaw dropped. "Um, Wilkus?"

Wilkus said nothing. He kept staring.

"Wilkus?" A small note of desperation.

"Lake," Wilkus said, speaking in that perfectly calm and toneless fashion of someone about to go utterly mad with rage.

"Wilkus!"

"My lake. That. It was my. Lake mine is. No. Yes. That was my lake. Yes. Fishing rights, it was mine. Only place, me to fish. _It's gone_. My fishing lake is _gone and HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO MAKE ANY MONEY WITH MY LAKE GONE-_"

"_Wilkus!_"

Wilkus whirled around on Bishop. "What!"

"_Look up there!_" Bishop said, pointing at the sky frantically.

"What are you-" Wilkus looked out the window. He stopped, and stared. His jaw dropped. "No. Seriously. _Seriously? SERIOUSLY_!"

"...I'm sorry?" Bishop said weakly.

"You silly bastard and your _boredom_. Well, you wanted excitement? You _GOT IT!_"

Hanging in the sky above them, engines burning green, was an unmistakably _alien _craft, streaked with dirt and bits of rock still gouged in and the scars of dozens of battles. It was huge, as it would have to be to have torn up the entire lake just by digging through it, and looked a bit...unwieldy, even scrappy. It didn't really look like it should be able to fly, let alone float there like it was. Even more absurd, there were a number of huge drills extending from bases all over the front of the craft, green specks like motes in sunlight floating around them.

"See?" Wilkus said sarcastically. "You got your wish. Exciting, isn't it."

Bishop gaped. "Holy dirt-slaps. Aliens. _Aliens_. Actual _aliens right here_. REAL ALIENS."

"Yes, it's real exciting. You've seen a alien ship. One that _got here by digging through the ground and DESTROYING the lake we get fish out of, and now we're totally fooked for a lifestyle,_ but hey! You've seen aliens. All is well."

"I know, isn't it!" Bishop said, one of those people completely immune to sarcasm. Wilkus facepalmed.

Inside the ship, which was of course the craft belong to the vaugely heroic Orks known colliquially as Da Boyz, Da Boss sat back and laughed excitedly. "WE DID IT, BOYZ! THE SURFACE OF A NEW WORLD! DUG RIGHT THROUGH, WE DID! HAH!"

"Yep," Said a nearby Grot.

"...So, where iz we, hah?"

The Grot, named Nikigok, shrugged. "I dunno."

Down below, Wilkus was not taking this well. "Hey! HEY!" He screamed at the ship. "LISTEN TO ME, YOU BASTARDS! HEY!"

"Woah, hey, what are you doing!" Bishop said, alarmed.

"Getting my satisfaction by giving these jerkasses what-for! I'll probably be lasered or something, but at least I'll die with my satisfaction! HEY! LISTEN TO ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU! YOU BASTARDS RUINED MY LIVELIHOOD!"

"Wilkus, hey, stop!" Bishop said desperately. "I don't think they can even hear you!"

He was wrong. "'Ey, Boss," An Ork said over a communicator in the room where Da Boss powered the Awesomness Engine. "We got summat yellin' at us."

Da Boss grunted; he actually disliked being called 'Da Boss'. It was a title, not his _name_, and it was hard work getting Da Boyz to call him by his actual name. "Really? Give 'em a shout an' see wot they're on about, yeah?"

"'Kay."

Outside, a hologram suddenly appeared in front of the ship, showing a horrible bestial green _thing _looking down on them. "_Yo,_" the Ork, one of the higher Ork castes (well, they had castes before Da Boss came) known as a Nob and was named Gorbash, said amiably.

"...Huh, it can hear you," Bishop said. "But it doesn't know people words or have translator technology! It's speaking some goofy langauge of madness and incomprehension and stupidness!"

"That's English," Wilkus said, having picked up some in his youth overseas. "Very, ah, authentic English. Sounds like it actually comes from England. The very roughest parts, I mean."

"_Wot's dis yelling, about, eh?_" The alien asked them, apparently unpeturbed. "_Ya humies gotz a problem?_"

"...What the hell did he just say?" Bishop asked.

"I'm not sure. I...think he wants to know what I'm mad about." Wilkus cleared his throat. "Well...what are you doing here?"

"_None of yer damn bid'ness is wot da Orkses iz doin' here. Wot's you gettin' all fussed about, eh?"_

"Oh? Oh! YOU DESTROYED MY LAKE! YOU TOTALLY KILLED MY JOB SECURITY!"

"_...Huh. Whoops. I guess."_ The alien shrugged indifferently, and checked a book. "_Uh, let's see...'Repartations To Random Things Wot Ain't Enemiez'...dang it, wish I knew how ta read..."_

"Then what are you carrying that book around for then?" Bishop asked.

"_Mind ya own bidness!_" Gorbash said.

"_Oy, wot's goin' on dere?_" The voice of Da Boss cut in.

"_Bit of a scrape 'ere. Dese humies iz sayin' dat we wronged him. Wot we'z s'posed ta do_?" Gorbash gave a plaintitve look. This was very unfamiliar territory for any Ork, and Gorbash had once been a Warboss. Like the rest of Da Boyz, he looked up to Da Boss for anything even remotely approaching that strange and frighteningly subjective thing called morality. It was doubtful that they would even try if not for Da Boss' encouragement, and the fact that doing good stuff felt...well, good.

Da Boss considered it. "_Wrecked der lives, eh? I 'spose dat's PART of wot we do, but like like dis, huh? Give 'em one of those big shiny rocks we looted from da mole peoples, dat'll make everythin' betta._"

"_Told yaz lootin' is da solution ta everythin',_" Gorbash said smugly, doing something with some instruments.

"_No g'wan, ask 'em where da hellz we is on dis planet!_"

"_Ho'kay. Hey, humies, where iz we?_"

"...What?"

_"Where. Iz. We? Da Boss wants to know, where did we crack out! Been digging for days, we wants to know where we iz!_"

"Um..." Wilkus felt embarrased that he didn't actually know. He lived a very provincial life. "Southern Africa?"

The alien stared at him. _"...Dat's it? Ain't nothin' more specific? Just 'Southern Africa'? Dat's not a very narrow thing, that's wot I'm sayin'."_

Wilkus fidgeted in acute embarrasment. "I think we're sort of close to Nigeria or something..."

The alien threw his arms up in frustration. "_Fig-yahz! Bah. Africa, eh? We'z WAY off-course. Africa, dat's hardly Canada at all. Eh, s'kay, bye._ _Gotz ya a present to say dat wussy humie thing. Wot'z dat thing yaz says when yaz done wrong?_"

"...Sorry?"

"_Yeah, dat'z it. Here yaz go_."

A small cannon on the front of the ship fired something; more dirt fountained just in front of Wilkus and Bishop. Wilkus grunted. "And they can't even shoot right. That thing missed us completely!" The smoke from the impact cleared. "And what the hell did...they...shoot."

A distinctive gleam shone from the basketball-sized object on the ground. "Is it just me," Bishop said, after a moment. "Or did the aliens just give us a big chunk of _gold_?"

"Yes," Wilkus said calmly. "Yes they did."

Bishop and him looked at each other. "You know," Wilkus said carefully. "I think I can live without the lake after all."

"And I think maybe we can afford our own excitement," Bishop said. He paused. "And also..." He held up a camcorder. "Alien contact would be _nice _for certain people to see, you know?"

"You recorded the whole thing?" Bishop nodded. "Nice." Wilkus paused. "...Edit out the part where we get the gold, please?"

"Yep."

They stared at each other, and did the Happy Dance of Capitalist Superiority. The situation called for it.

Then Gorbash said, _"Nice dance, humies, ya realize we'z taping dat, right? Looks stupid."_

The two fishermen turned around. The alien ship was still there. "Beh?" Bishop said.

"_Da Boss wants ta know one more thing. How'z we gonna find the nearest...uh, how'z it go... 'crim-i-nal pit of scum and vill-a-ny'...?We needs ta fight da Good Fight!"_

Wilkus scratched his head. "In this political climate? Throw a rock, I think."

Gorbash grunted. "_Eh, good enuff. Say, iz dat a camera? Wuz YOU TAPING US SHOWIN' UP AFORE WE'Z READY?_"

Bishop paled in terror and excitement. "Um. Yes?"

Gorbash shrugged. "_Jest askin'_."

"_KICKASS!" _Da Boss added. "_DA BOYZ NEED EXPOSURE! GO FORTH, FISHER-HUMIES, AND GO FIGHT FOR YA DREAMS! YAZ HUMIE, __**DATZ WHAT YAZ FOR!**_"

With those stirring (and incomprehensible) words, Da Boyz flew off, soon to descend upon the first den of evil they found to beat them to a pulp and take all their stuff, leaving Wilkus and Bishop to go live their own stories, which swiftly stopped having anything to do with Da Boyz or the Total Drama kids. In fact, aside from the upcoming troubles to feature on Earth, Wilkus and Bishop would go one to lead very comfortable lives from their newfound wealth, and die many years later in the comfort of their very nice homes, satisfied with their lives and regretting nothing.

Bishop was a bit bored, but there's no pleasing some people.

As they left, Nikigok told Da Boss, "Dem was some nice wordz, Boss. Wish I knew how ta talk fancy like dat."

"It'z easy!" Da Boss said easily. "All ya gotz ta do iz speak from da heart with all da fire ya CAN! Ya does with enough passion, and da universe makes da wordz come out all fancy and epic. At least dat's how it workz for me, see?"

"Not really, but I wantz ta!"

Da Boss chuckled. "Good enuff! Nikigok, I wantz yaz ta know. Yaz good at sneaking and stuff better den most of Da Boyz?"

"Yeah!" Nikigok said, not bothering to ask how Da Boss knew this. He was _Da Boss_.

"An' ya like da kidz I gotz my eye on, yeah?"

"Dem Total Drama kiddiez? Yeah!"

Da Boss grinned. "I gotz a _special _job for you..."

Nikigok listened to the job, and took it at once. It was from Da Boss. What else would he do?

Everything from Da Boss was _Da Word_.

...

The multiverse is made of stories.

Untold billions upon millions upon thousands, and those are the ones that only make an obvious difference in the overall meta-fiction of history. The stories of Da Boyz and the Total Drama kids began to become closer, though only Da Boyz were aware of it, as it was Da Boss' design. And by then, they had other business to attend to before then.

Six weeks passed after Da Boyz broke through the surface of what was, for them, a brave new world, and they found it an enchanting one, largely free of the grim darkness of the universe they had come from.

They had a mission to do, though, and that involved some proppa stompin'. In their ship, crude and unwieldly but millenia more advanced than any technology of Earth, they went across the world, doing as Da Boss had taught them: taking all their Orky bloodlust, battlerage and need for fighting out on people who _needed _to have their heads crumped, and by doing so making the world a better place for everyone and therefore making _everything-that-is_ better. (Stealing their beaten enemie's stuff was a bonus.)

This alone would have gotten them a great deal of attention once people faced up to them being aliens, but they also weren't camera shy at all. Da Boss insisted that they pose.

So, along with the teenagers rapidly becoming extremely dissatisfied with their lot in life and wishing they could get away from it, Da Boyz were becoming very noticable to the media indeed, and almost as much scrunity put on their actions.

The kids aboard the Total Drama Airship had become aware of this, of course. Their opinions on it were, of course, varied.

Deep in the airship, in one of the more heavily trapped parts that had once hosted soldier's barracks (according to Alejandro's observations; he claimed he had visited quite many a military base to know how they were designed and this airship was _very _military), in a vaulted corridor shaped in arcs and vaults that made for wonderful acoustics (not good if you were hiding from something) Noah and Izzy carefully made their way down the corridor, the more sensible boy leading the way.

The airship bothered him. It wasn't something he'd shared with the other contestants, because they didn't ask, but...the airship didn't seem to _fit _right. The half-faded stylized flames engraved in the walls, the way the metal clearly had been heated by flames far more intense than any forge, the worrying intent and unpleasant purpose that seemed to emanate from the airship's shell like it had been made for murder...

It didn't belong here. And _they _didn't belong in it. Noah had been having dreams, terrible dreams unlike the usual lucid ones he had, but he was on more comfortable ground discussing those, because _everyone _had been having some, including Izzy.

"So last night I found myself crawling in the corner under a bed and I had a pretty bad headache," Noah told Izzy while they inched across the side of the wall to avoid pressing any pressure-senstive floor panels. Well, Noah was, Izzy was just swinging on the ceiling and having a grand ol' time. "Feel free to draw your own conclusions, but the bottom of that bed was dented pretty bad."

"Didn't you get your bed taken off the walls so it wouldn't flip into the wall and almost suffocate you again?" Izzy asked, hanging upside down from a handhold by her toes.

"Yes. I did. Still ended up under it. Make sense of _that_."

"And all I did was hear the unending screams of a thousand worlds burning forever in the hellfires of incomprehensibly vast gods embodying emotions that are supposed to be good and stuff but taken so far they became _PURE EVIL_," Izzy said. "...I bet your dream would have been better. Even if it was so bad you beat it out of your head while you were still asleep."

"Oh?"

"Yep! I got to see _why _they were screaming. And who was doing it to them. They were really, ah, _inventive_."

Noah paused, stepping gingerly over a tripwire; he was certain this one had been snipped before. He suspected that one of the interns - possibly Rossiu, but then he didn't know just where his alliegences lay - kept rearming the traps. "Inventive. Now there's a word you don't want to hear in this context."

"You sure don't," Izzy said, swinging to the next rafter in such a way that she spun right through the barely visible web of lasers without so much as getting singed.

"Now they're using deadly lasers again," Noah said. "...I miss the old days, when we could ask if Chris was trying to kill us and it wasn't rhetorical."

"What about having actual rules? But hey, that one's fun!" Izzy said, laughing manically while she dropped down just in time to avoid a hunter robot that slammed into where she had just been, breaking itself. "I _like _no rules! ANARCHY IS AWESOME!"

"Technically, we're in a state of controlled chaos modified only by everyone apparently being unwilling to have a violent free-for-all and turn this place into a bloodbath," Noah said. "Anarchy is chaotic, but chaos is not automatically anarchy."

"How'd ya know that?"

"I was stuck with Harold for a day and we had time to talk while being chased by hyenas some idiot thought would be funny to stick us with. It's an educational experience."

They kept walking, entering an area that had no traps or horrible trick-walls or unpleasant surprises or savage beasts (Unless you counted Sierra, her bunk was in the area); the reason for all of this was because this was one of the areas where the contestants had made their sleeping quarters and they made sure that those places at least were safe. They could hardly stay sane if they didn't have at least one precious place free of death-bringing suffering. It was insane that they had survived this long, and that no one had complained to the studios about this: people _enjoyed _watching them almost dying, sickeningly enough.

"Chris is up to something," Noah said, partly to himself, and this wasn't the first time he'd said it. "He's got something worse than usual up his sleeve and this isn't gonna be the worst of it, you know."

"Yeah," Izzy said, landing on the ground next to him and keeping in step. "But whatcha gonna do?"

Noah grimaced. They couldn't leave the airship; the interns made quite _sure _of that. There had been more than one altercation; just last week, Owen'd had an all-out panic attack when the stress of being isolated for long periods of time by the airship's dangerous traps had brought back his fear of flying, and it had not ended well.

Eventually, he and Izzy reached a door without being molested by traps or unexpected horrors, and reached a reinforced door. "You sure Sierra lives here?" Noah said; he hadn't seen her or Cody in a while, and he had suspected they were lost somewhere again; starting with their rooms seemed a safe bet and he wasn't sure where Cody lived on the airship. He firmly believed that it was in their best interests to ally with each other or the airship would kill them all eventually.

No one was dead yet. But if they stayed apart, it was only a matter of time. Noah played online RPGs, he had seen this happen so many times.

He knocked on the door, and he heard Sierra's voice, cheery as always, shout, "Come in! Unless you're a monster. In that case, go away!"

"Awww," Izzy said sadly. Noah rolled his eyes and pushed the door open (it had been reinforced, but not closed, how very silly!).

The room was rather odd. It was pretty big, and Noah briefly resented Sierra for being so lucky to claim a room like this for her own. Probably it had once been an armory or maybe a storage room for some valuable supply that was no longer needed, but now the floors had been covered with a multitude of blankets Sierra had scavenged from somewhere, fluffy and multicolored and quite pretty in a disjointed way. Several tables had remained, and most of them were covered with all manner of odd memorabilia and mementos Sierra evidently thought signicant. (She was a bit of a packrat, judging by how much of this stuff she had scavenged all ready.) Strangely enough, there was more than one hunter robot lying diseccted on the table, or machines in the process of being built, as if an engineer had been at work.

In fact, Noah realized as he walked in and got a better look, a lot of this didn't seem quite in character for Sierra. There were at least two chairs for every table. He saw two computers on a table, in the process of being made from spare parts scavenged from around the airship. A large makeshift bed in the middle of the room, a huge mass of blankets and cushions mashed together with a huge comfort sheet and two overfluffed pillows on top, was clearly overmuch for just _one _person. There was a geekiness to the room; a sense of disjointed cheerful obsession directed all manner of minor projects and hobbies, but not all of it was of Sierra, surely.

Among those obsessions was a variety of papers stuck to the walls, not unlike something you might see on a schizophrenic's room that pointed out the Swedish military's link to the recent rise in tourism to the isle of Komodo; they were a big mess of crude drawings of green aliens, photos of green aliens, intensively complicated diagrams, delicately worked out calculations, big flowcharts of possible trends relating to the alien incursions, a painstakingly worked out character alignment chart that ended in _CHAOTIC GOOD? _in big excited letters. Sitting on the floor on matching green-and-purple pillows, feverishly typing away at a pair of battered computers hooked up to each other (possibly the ones being built were backups) was Sierra and Cody, both of them still quite clearly in their sleeping clothes, Sierra in a dark green T-shirt and shorts; Cody in matching clothing but colored light purple.

Cody looked up at Izzy and Noah, seemingly oblivious to Noah's bewilderment, and grinned. His face had a slightly pale tint that suggested he hadn't been getting a lot of sleep and that pinkish sheen common to an obsessive who just _knew _he was on the edge of a major breakthrough. "Hey guys," He said, before going right back to typing away like a madman, doing...something.

Sierra turned around, grinning with a similar unstable way, and said, "Whatcha doin' down here?"

"Looking for you guys, silly!" Izzy said with a big grin, after briefly looking at Noah. Possibly, she'd noticed that her friend seemed more disheveled than usual: her hair, recently regrown to shoulder-length and colored a more natural black that Noah assumed was her natural hair color, flopped a bit, a big unkempt mass with tangles and frayed ends everywhere. Noah didn't want to get too close; she and Cody _stunk_, their body odor thick and not rank exactly, but getting there. Sweat and body oils mixing together for days on end was not a pleasant smell. Noah found himself wondering how long it had been since they had taken baths, or even left this room. Or _slept_.

That thought raised a host of other question, espicially considering the double bed. Noah gave it a glance before Sierra giggled, a bit unsteadily, and said, "That's silly. Why'd you want to look for us?" She gasped. "Ooh! Did you hear about our thing about the aliens! Because that is so _cool!_"

"Wow, wait, what!" Cody said, leaning around his computer unsteadily and almost falling over. Noah saw him trembling when he pushed himself back up and Sierra had to lean around to get him back up. Forget sleeping and bathing, when was the last time he'd _eaten_? "Already? You found out already? I didn't know Harold had told anyone yet. We haven't even reported in for a few days!" He grinned, and one of his eyes slowly drifted around until he blinked. "That's...that's cool...we're so close. Me and Sierra. We're so _close_."

"Okay, this is getting weird," Noah said. "What are you guys talking about? I just came down here to see if you were still alive and Izzy brought me 'cause she was thinking the same thing and anyway she's the only one that knows where Sierra lives."

"Oh," The two of them said in unison, looking disappointed. They brightened up anyway. "Aww," Sierra said. "You were _concerned! _Noah has people-feelings."

"Why are people always surprised?" Noah complained.

"Someone cares about my continued existence!" Cody said happily. "It's almost like having friends."

Sierra gasped, not because she had apparently been left out but because he felt that way at all. "I _care! _I always cared! And I'm your friend!"

Cody grinned crookedly at her. "Yeah...yeah..." He wavered unsteadily again and almost fell over before he caught himself. "But sometimes, I, uh, almost feel like that's for granted, you know? Automatic thing. Don't remember it sometimes."

"My affection is taken for granted?" Sierra made a victorious little pumping gesture. "That means my continued existence is _acceptable to someone!_"

The two of them continued to celebrate. "Aw, that's kind of cute!" Izzy remarked to Noah. "In the way that understated emotional issues amplified by extreme stress and social isolation can be."

"We've been in this game too long," Noah muttered to her. "It's making us crazy. Crazier, some of us," He added, noticing that Sierra was staring at her own hair with deep fascination.

"Shiny," Sierra said vaugely.

"It is shiny," Cody said.

"Okay, seriously, what's going on here!" Noah said, marching over to Cody to get a look at the screen. "I haven't seen you in days, you clearly haven't been eating or sleeping or anything in that time, and anyway what are you doing in her room? Your room is at least easier to get to the eating room or bathrooms!"

Cody shrugged. "Yeah, it used to be."

"'Used to be'? Did someone somehow move the interior of the airship around? Again!"

"What?" Sierra said. "Nope, Cody just lives here with me now."

Noah stared blankly. "...Does he, now."

"Wow, you guys move fast," Izzy said.

Cody has enough presence of mind to be embarrased. "Wait, wait, it's not like that. I think."

"_You're sharing the same bed,_" Noah pointed out.

"Are not! Wait. Wait. Wait. Oh yeah, we are," Cody said. He paused. "...It helps, you know."

"Helps what?"

"The nightmares," Sierra said, with unexpected quietness. "Having someone..._with _you? At night? They're not so bad, when you wake up almost screaming and there's someone you _know _is there for you. It helps, a whole lot."

Noah readjusted his evaluation. "Ah," He said. "Well...that makes a bit more sense. Come to think it, I heard that some of the others did the same thing. Bridgette and Geoff, obviously, and a few others I can't be bothered to keep in mind, but...you, Cody? And Sierra? Never thought you'd do something like that."

Cody shrugged. "Me neither."

"Moving in with someone to help with the crushing isolation and stuff?" Izzy said. "Nice moves, Sierra." She gave her a little elbow nudge. "Work fast, don't you?"

"Yep," Sierra said happily. Cody gave the air a sort of vacantly pleased look.

Izzy gave Noah a sidelong look and a evil little grin that filled him with sudden worry and fear. "Now _there's _an idea," She said. Noah had a sudden impulse to run and hide himself away forever. Izzy took a look at what Sierra was doing. "Saaay, what's all this?"

Sierra and Cody looked at each other, the tiredness going out of them both immediately and replaced by a manic energy that was a lot more worrying. As one, they looked at the mess of papers and pictures on the wall and they said, "_Everything_."

"O-kay, that's not creepy at all," Noah said sarcastically. "But, seriously, what have you two been doing down here? And I mean that in the sense of need-to-know basis and a lack of _personal _stuff. The papers! What's that about is what I mean!"

Sierra and Cody blinked. They looked at each other, grinned, and laughed, in that state of mind where anything can be funny. (It is generally only acquired by either the badly stoned or someone in a deep state of frantic busyness coupled with dangerous lack of sleep.) "Okay, fine!" Sierra said, giggling madly and getting up, wavering a bit but still much better than Cody, who tried to get up but fell over, his legs apparently refusing to work. She went over and, with Izzy's help, got him onto his feet. Cody almost fell back immediately, so Sierra worked one of his arms around her waist and hoisted him up with her hand at his side, forcing him to lean on her like a crutch.

There was a slight clattering from an airvent on the wall, too small to permit anything human-sized in. Noah gave it a look, but supposed that since it was bolted shut, nothing could get into the room and attack them. Sometimes that was a problem. "I don't suppose Ezekiel's been crawling around here?"

"I dunno," Cody said. He turned his head. "Are you in there, Zeke?"

"Newp!" Said a high-pitched and heavily accented voice.

"Okay," Cody said, his brain not in a condition to realize that this was not a normal thing. And also, the voice having a thick football hooligan accent. (Or, in one dark universe, an _Orky _accent.)

Noah gave them a look. "...There's someone in there!"

"No dere's not!" Said the something in the vent.

"The vent's gotta know best!" Sierra said. Noah gave up, already coming up with a plan to do something about Sierra and Cody; and he wanted to at least see what they'd been obsessing over. She led them all over to the wall where so many different things - papers, photos, handmade graphs and charts and the like - and gestured proudly. "Check it out! Our complete findings into the aliens among us!"

"They're hot!" Izzy said chirpily. Noah blinked.

He was vestigially aware that some weeks ago, aliens had shown up in the middle of a tiny village in Africa; one of the two fisherman that had recorded it had sold the video footage to dozens of different networks, and a lot of people had gone more than a little crazy over it. (Harold espicially.) Noah was suspicious; they'd already seen aliens in Area 51, though he had already been eliminated from World Tour at the time. He was half-convinced that it was an elaborate prank, though admittedly he hadn't had much contact with mass media. No one had, aside from some TVs and sattilite connections they'd manage to rig up in a desperate need for distractions from their increasingly hard life on the airship; stress requires a release or something eventually goes wrong, and nothing builds stress like being in a place of people that hate or distrust you and constantly being on edge for your life. (How Sierra and Cody had gotten this information was anyone's guess.)

There was a picture of one of the aliens; a massive hulking beast, green-skinned and hunched like an ape, it's body bulging with powerful muscles and covered by crude clothing generally in the form of leathery skins stitched together with plates of metal over them. It's face was something out of a nightmare; almost skull-like with it's porcine nose, it's oversized lower jaw hanging slack with a array of knife-long yellowed teeth extending past it's lips like tusks. It's Neanderthalic brows beetled over eyes glowing like burning coals, and the comparatively small pointed ears were so full of metal rings and studs and earrigns and piercing that the weight should have tipped it's head over. At the top of this was a simple word, just over the rather nice Prussian military cap it was wearing: _ORK_.

"Nice portrait," Noah said sarcastically. "What, is this one of those sketches based on eyewitness reports?"

"No, he posed for that one," Cody said. "We found it on live TV; they were just doing a cat show and then this alien...this 'Ork'...smashed it, petted all the kittens for no reason, then he slapped the security guard because he was wearing an ugly tie, and demanded that somebody make a good picture of him to show people. They did, and he left."

"Well, who doesn't like cats?" Izzy said. "And I saw that report. It was AWESOME! That guy's tie was so ugly, it is an ugliness that ugly despairs, it is what people smell when they drudge the foul horrors of the deep to the sun-kissed lands above only to witness their last ichor-stained exporations."

"That was surprisingly poetic!"

"I read a lot of cosmic horror stories!" Izzy said. "The nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft are the stuff of my fluffy-dreams."

Noah tried not to think about that, and for something to do, looked at the other stuff. He wasn't quite sure what most of it was, but he did recognize the photo of the alien ship hovering in mid-air, dirty and sharp against the African skyline, looking like the living fantasy of a steampunk enthusiast's dreams. Unlike most pictures of dubious urban legends, this was perfectly clear and unmarred, leaving no mistake as to what the thing in the picture was. (On the other hand, it could still be an expertly arranged model.) "The very first picture of the alien's craft!" Sierra said proudly. "Right before they vanished to destianations unknown." She grinned. "Until they showed up again.

She pointed at a map of the world; dozens of little circles had been marked out in red. "For weeks, the aliens have been coming out of nowhere, and these are the places we can definitely confirm them to being doing stuff at!" A few photos had been pinned up nearby, showing urban scenes; rundown cities, gloomy slums, fetid ghettoes...though they were certainly a lot less apparently so due to the green aliens in each photo, all doing something destructive. Picking up mail boxes and throwing them through windows, stealing trucks and running them through buildings, shooting at billboards with rocket launchers, using gatling guns that shot explosive lasers to make graffiti on the streets...

"Um," Noah said, and gave up. There wasn't a whole more he _could _say. "Um."

"They've been all across the world!" Sierra said. "Going from city to city, town to town, country to country. Sometimes they fly in their spaceship or little vehicles. Sometimes they dug right from underground and bust up everything in their way. And sometimes, they sneak in. Or try to." Sierra pointed at a picture of one of those brutes tip-toeing through a police barrier in a trenchcoat, an extremely furry little round thing that was mostly mouth sitting on the alien's head and wearing a fedora with a little piece of paper saying _I AM A HUMIE! _on it. Also, both of them were painted a shade of bright purple that was painful to look at.

"That's the worst disguise anyone has ever done," Cody said.

"I've seen worse," Izzy said unconcernedly. "And anyway, that's a pretty good idea. Trenchcoat and fedoras _ROCK_, and purple is the best sneaking color!"

"Huh?" Noah said.

"You've ever seen a purple army sneaking around?"

"No."

"That's because purple's _real _sneaky."

"How do you think people never used to notice me until it was too late!" Sierra said excitedly.

Noah gripped his head. "The assaults on logic! They burn!"

Sierra laughed giddily. "I know, isn't it fun?"

"So what are the aliens actually doing?" Izzy asked. "Wrecking stuff for fun and giggles."

"Maybe," Cody said. "But we've figured that they might have an ulterior motive. See, they keep attacking completely random places. At least...it looks that way. See, _every single place they've attacked_? Has to do with sometihng EVIL!"

"No way!"

"Yes way! We did a ton of investigating, and it all holds up! A street in San Francisco? Home of the most vicious gang in North America. A compound in the United States South, where they kidnapped everyone there and dumped them in Israel? The biggest Neo-Nazi white supremecy skinhead organization on the entire planet! A European law firm? The executives of it were making money off of letting vicious criminals and serial rapists off so they could make headlines and let the news studios under those executives control sensationalize them for profit! The list goes on and on, but the point is this! They've rampaged across the planet, they strike out of nowhere, steal everything their enemies have and disappear...but they somehow keep leaving proof that these guys are big-time bad guys! Sometimes not so big time, but it's a minor thing."

"...Huh," Noah said, grudgingly impressed. "But what about the people caught in the crossfire?"

Sierra grinned at him. "There aren't any."

"What."

"I was just as surprised as you! I don't know how they do it, but every single bullet, every flamethrower shot, every exploding missle they shoot..._not a single _thing they do gets anyone that's not involved hurt. It breaks, like, a million-zillion-billion laws of probability. It should be impossible, but they do it anyway. I checked the law records and convictions that go on afterwards, it's all true! And also, only the people involved in the _real _nasty stuff actually die. The other ones somehow survive for jail. I don't know how, since they fight with giant machine-guns and huge laser and flamethrowers and these big chainsaw-sword-things, but they do it anyway. And, maybe even bigger things..." Sierra said ominously. She pointed at several pictures of battlescapes the aliens had left behind, and in them were things like the marks of tank treads and massive footprints suitable to a _dinosaur_.

"Okay, okay," Noah said, trying to stay calm. "Let's assume these are real aliens. Let's assume that they _are _trying to help for whatever reason...in a violent and insane way, but nonetheless, help. Why?"

Sierra shrugged, nearly upsetting Cody; she quickly adjusted herself to keep him upright. "Who knows? They talk to people a lot. That's how I figured out what they call themselves. It depends; sometimes they call themselves 'Da Boyz' and sometimes 'Da Orkz', but I think these particular guys are 'Da Boyz'. I think 'Ork' is their species as a whole. Anyway, they're not exactly camera-shy, but they haven't gone out of their way to explain what they're doing here. Then again, they don't stick around long enough for any bystanders to ask questions like that."

Cody pointed at something. "But we might just have a big clue to something important to them."

"What's that?" Izzy asked. "Is it their god?"

"Could be." The photo Cody indicated...well, Noah wasn't sure what to expect, but he certainly wasn't expecting to see a wall painted with graffiti of all sorts: _Da Orkz iz DA BEST! _and _Da Boyz Iz Gonna Turn Da Wurld Upside-Downz _and most prominently _Kah-Mee-Nah Believes In You!_; this last one, made with such grave care that it looked almost holy in it's sharp letters, had a small arrow next to it, and it was pointing at a _human _in the picture; a blue-haired teen their age and of uncertain ethnicity, dressed in similar fashion to the Orks, giving a huge thumbs up and grinning like a fool while two tiny Orks resembling goblins did a little dance around him, like little kids playing with their big brother.

"That guy," Sierra said proudly, like someone who had found a big clue to a great mystery. "Shows up a _lot_."

"...That's a guy," Izzy said. "A _cute _guy, but what's he doing there? Did he join the aliens?"

"We're...not sure," Cody said. "Sierra thinks it might be the other way around...but whatever he's doing there, he seems pretty important to them."

"Is that a chainsaw on his back!" Noah demanded.

"Yeah, the Orks seem to love them for weapons. Not as much as they seem to love this guy. Look at this picture."

There was another photo, or rather, a series of them, overlapping on each other to make small pieces of a larger picture; it was the ruins of a building, and graffiti had been drawn over it, resembling a boast about someone. In lines of ragged letters that looked like visible growls, they said:

_HIM IZ DA BOSS._

_HIM IZ DA ONE WHO GAVE DA BOYZ DA RIGHT AND PROPPA._

_HIM WUZ MADE HUMIE BY DA GODZ, AND HIM'Z DA ONE DAT GOT KNOCKED PROPPA IN DA HEAD._

_HIM TOOK EACH OF DA BOYZ, KNOCKED DA WORD INTA OUR HEADZ AND GAVE UZ DA KNOWING._

_HIM IZ DA BOSS. HIM IS KAH-MEE-NAH, AND WE IZ ALL HIS BRUDDAHS._

_IN HIM IS DA BRUTAL CUNNING OF GORK. IN HIM IZ DA CUNNING BRUTALITY OF MORK. (OR DA OTHER WAY AROUND, SEE?)_

_HE IZ DA ORK WHAT WUZ BORN HUMIE. HIM IZ DA ONLY ORK EVA WHO GOTS STRONG IN DA HEAD, DA BODY, AND DA __**HEART**__. _

_KAH-MEE-NAH IZ HIS NAME, AN' HE'Z GOT DA SPINNY-FOREVER IN HIS EYE._

_TRUST KAH-MEE-NAH, HUMIES. TAKE THE KNOWING OF DA RIGHT AND PROPPA!_

"Wow," Izzy said. "Deep."

"That's..." Noah started to say. He shook his head and tried not to grin. Reading all that was like listening to a good story so wonderful and proper and _right _that you wanted it to be real. A dream so strong it was bigger than the real world. The words were simple, the grammer atrocious, but there was a feeling there, desperate and heartfelt and _true_. He didn't know what to say. "It's like...they _believe _in this like people believed in gods," He eventually managed. "Is that human guy...is he this 'Kah-Mee-Nah'?"

"Definitely," Cody said. "We're sure of that all right." He paused, and smiled faintly. "...These aliens are crazy. They're destructive and they're like fratboys with guns. But they're changing things. Just a few weeks ago, there was a huge human trafficking ring in South America that was bribing away the authorities. There was a little genocide going on in a part of Russia the world had almost forgotten about. And worse, so much worse." He smiled brighter. "They're _gone _now. The ones that could be imprisoned are behind bars. The ones that were above the law? Now they're in _pieces_."

"I think you need some sleep," Noah said gently after a moment. "You're starting to think like the crazy alien monsters."

Cody twitched. "Can't sleep," He muttered. "We're so close. Just...just have to look a _bit _more. We're this close to finding that last bit of knowing. Almost there, we almost know what they really are, why they came here, what they're after..." He tottered, even helped up by Sierra, who outweighed him considerably. "I...I...I can do something!" He said suddenly.

"We know," Izzy said, moving behind Cody and Sierra to steer them towards the bed and some much needed sleep. "Gotta sleep, or your brains will explode. Or precious organs. Do you want splodey meat-bits?"

Cody didn't appear to listen. "Can't do anything right," he said. "But I can _try_. I never make ever. But I gotta try. Gotta keep moving. Gotta _smash through_. Doing anything without help iz impossible, but I gotta try. Keep going. Keep trying. I'll make it. I can do this one thing. I can help Sierra."

Sierra tightened her grip on his arm. "_We_ can do it," She said sternly, not paying attention to her feet and almost tripping; Noah shouldered her weight in time, which almost knocked him off his feet. Sierra was far from a small girl, and she was even heavier than she looked. "Know we can! Nothin's impossible when it's me an' you. Can do it. Yeah. Definitely. No maybes. _We can do it_."

Cody smiled faintly. "Nice to have someone that believes in me..." He muttered faintly.

"Enough crazy talk from you guys, we get enough of that when you aren't nearly dead on your feet," Noah said, and for a moment he deeply pitied them both, and then wondered if pity was the right word. They seemed happy enough. Stupidly disinterested in their own well-being, but happy. He and Izzy finally got them to the bed and let go, both Sierra and Cody falling over and softly bouncing off the mass of blankets and cushions. They lay there for a moment, and then Sierra rolled over, slipping her arms over Cody's sides and mashing his entire body right up against her's in a tight desperate hug. Instead of pulling away, like Noah expected, Cody nuzzled in deeper as if in near-unconsciousness, a distance of several inches was still too far away for him to tolerate.

"I totally knew he'd go for her," Izzy said smugly as Cody, falling fast into sleep, slipped his arms past her sides and clung to her like a drowning man to the faintest hope of air. He shivered a bit, but as Sierra hugged him tighter, he stopped. Maybe it made the both of them feel like they weren't alone. There was a pause of several long moments, both their eyes closed, and both Cody and Sierra's breathing became the regular patterns of true sleep.

"Yeesh," Noah said. "This airship really _is _tough on people." Izzy grinned. "Why are you grinning at me like that? I don't think I like you grinning at me like that..."

They left, after putting some proper sheets on Cody and Sierra and also turning off their computers and making sure to save all their work. (Overheating computers is a bad idea.) They glanced back once, more, and left, and they didn't notice the continued scamperings of the the small Grot named Nikigok, having broke into the airship on Da Boss's orders and watching the whole thing through his spot in that vent, occasionally taking notes on a very small notepad he was carrying around with him or taking pictures with a spy-camera.

He had waited, listened, and watched with a patience alien to an Ork, but not to a Grot, which had to take the brunt of the thinking duties among the Orks (and, outside of Da Boyz, the abuse; Da Boss did _not _tolerate that stuff); that ability served him well in the mission given to him by Da Boss, and like all jobs assigned by Da Boy to his Boyz, it was taken with enormous enthusiasm, determination and an approach towards doing it best compared to the same approach any Ork took towards any objective; if it could be done with something, then it could be done even _better _with lots of something!

That something, in this case, was stealth; along with subterfuge, subtlety, and in fact any ability that tended towards deceit or being deceptive to others or yourself, stealth was something Orks tended to not only lack but actively dislike. (And by dislike, that means that they hated it with a burning passion and liked to shoot dictionaries in order to wipe out those hateful ideas that were anathema to all things good and Orky.) Nikigok was one of those who, thanks to Da Boss' unconventional thinking and habits passed down to Da Boyz, had thought that maybe subtlety and all it's children were maybe worth a look-up.

That was good, for the airship was a dangerous place. Not just for a Gretch like him, but espicially for the contestants. The public _liked _seeing people in danger (generally assuming that it was all expertly timed to avoid killing anyone when the producers of the show didn't actually mind if anyone died; it was a miracle that they were all still alive, actually), and the new show had already delivered on that; the airship was intentionally rigged with all sorts of bizarre traps to get to bathrooms or the eating area; entire hallways in the most frequented areas had been converted into ornate obstacle courses to make it hard for them to, say, find a rec room or a place to watch TV; seemingly innocent patches of walls would swing open to reveal a savage beast, intent with revenge for anyone that associated with DJ or was just alive, and the barracks (one apiece for each contestant) where the contestants lived and slept were infested with all manner of clever devices, trick doors, false walls and trapdoors, all designed less for lethality and more for making life utterly miserable; more than one contestant had disappered for a few days because of these traps.

Da Boss knew, now. Knew about all of this, thanks to Nikigok telling him. He was..._displeased_.

And then there was the matter of the peculiar intern in charge of everything, Rossiu, who effectively ruled the airship with an iron hand but rarely did anything to even show he had authority aside from trying his hardest to get rid of the most dangerous of the traps he could find-

Nikigok heard a scraping behind him, and a gruff growl, turning around to see a horribly diseased human behind him.

Ezekiel crept slowly on Nikigok and the Grot did as he was wont to do in these circumstances, and prompty fled for his life, Ezekiel in hot pursuit.

He got away, of course, but that's a longer and unimportant story.

...

Nikigok's presence had not gone totally unnoticed.

"I'm telling you guys, there's _something _here!" Duncan said for the sixth time, having tried and failed to get the other's attention.

"Yes, there is," Said Justin. "It's small, suspicious and _horribly _unpleasant to look at! Also, there's Ezekiel, but I'm sure Rossoy doesn't mind the competition."

"His names Rossiu," Beth corrected him.

"Yes, that too."

Duncan, Justin, Beth and a few other of the contestants were presently holed up inside the eating room, a large cafeteria-type room with an adjoined large kitchen suitable for all their needs and a single round table, thus keeping a minimum on possible 'sub-order' organizing that might happen. (It wouldn't do if, say, the ruthless and good-looking kids like Justin, Courtney, Alejandro and Heather joined up to put their heads together and possibly seek to use the geeks like Harold, Noah, Sierra and Cody as human sacrifices for the dangers of the airship. Rossiu was doing his best to steer them away from those dangerous waters, with the help of the contestants that actually wanted people to get along, like DJ and Owen.) The kids here were taking the oppertunity to eat and wait out a number of time-based traps currently keeping them stuck in the eating room, and get away from Rossiu, who had a certain gift for unnerving a lot of people. (Even Bridgette, the kindest of them all, thought there was something unnervingly intense about the younger boy.)

"Hey, no need to talk about him behind his back," Geoff said gallantly. "Sure, the kid's creepy, but ya don't gotta be a jerk about it."

"But that's the best time to do it!" Duncan joked. "Seriously, though, you've seen that kid? There's some weird gears clicking behind that giant forehead of his. I'm waiting to see him find a gun somewhere and whisper sweet nothings to us while he's writing down a list of which one of us he's gonna kill first." He paused. "Geeks are going first, you know. They always go after the unpopular kids."

"I'm sure Rossiu means well," Courtney said, more or less because Duncan had said the opposite. "And he respects the rules and enforces them at every turn! How can you not approve of such dedication?"

"How about when those rules are directly aimed at making us miserable for the viewing audience?" Gwen said. "...Seriously. The people that like us must be _twisted_."

They paused as Sierra came to mind.

"The fact that a considerable amount of the viewing public fits that description, based on our popularity, is not an encouraging thought," Alejandro said; in light of the fact that they had to all work together just to stay in single most unmaimed pieces, Eva and Noah had reluctantly let him out of the robot he'd been put inside, under the condition that they still had the robot waiting for him should he turn evil again. And also, there were plenty of airlocks to shove him out of.

"Popularity is desirable regardless of how it's earned," Justin said primly. Gwen, Beth and Duncan made disagreeable little noises.

"Experience has taught me otherwise," Rossiu said, his arms folded behind his back, standing right behind Justin when he had previously not been in the room at all.

Nearly everyone scooted back in a fit of panic; Justin fell out of his chair and screamed like a little girl. "Where did you come from!" Gwen said.

"A personal question? That's new from you lot." Rossiu thought about it with an amused seriousness. "Well, my memories tend to be a bit fuzzy, but I was born in North Korea but then an earthquake buried my entire extended family underground, and after I spent six days eating dead rats and drinking my own urine while trying not to go insane from being packed with the dead bodies of my family; I realized that doing so was unproductive in the long run and the smell of the decaying bodies was starting to get to me, so I dug my way out with a drill I made from rat bones after clawing my hands bloody on the bedrock in a futile effort to do it with my hands and-" He stopped, noticing that everyone was starting at him with various degrees of horror, revulsion and disbelief. "Ah, you meant _right _now. I just used the door. You weren't paying much attention to it."

There was another awkward silence. Possibly the oddest thing about the way Rossiu said things like that was the casual tone he said them in, like he didn't consider them particularily important.

"...I used to get nervous in small spaces but I spent some time working at a mental hospital in Israel for people with post-traumatic stress disorder and I met a psychologist that talked me out of that," Rossiu added as an afterthought. He frowned at Duncan. "And I can assure you, if I _was _going mad and planning to kill you all...well, I wouldn't start with the 'geeks', I promise you that. They don't arbitarily insult someone whose lives are in their hands."

"Hint hint," Beth said. Rossiu glanced at her, bemused, and she looked away in a hurry, a bit red in the face. Rossiu clearly had no idea what to make of it.

Duncan rolled his eyes, clearly thinking that Rossiu was acting tough. (This was an incorrect assumption.) "Whatever you say, midgets."

Beth made a indignant huff. Rossiu frowned. "I'm not short. I have...I'm just...my size doesn't matter."

Duncan grinned at him. "Yeah, I'm sure you'll tell all the girls that."

Beth colored. "Dun-_caaan! _That's gross!"

"...Wait, what does that mean?" Rossiu asked, perplexed.

"You don't get out much, do you?" Courtney asked him plainly.

"I'm sure he'll never get a chance to find out what I mean." Duncan yawned and stretched lazily. "I mean, do you even like girls, forelock boy?"

Rossiu tried to smooth over the stubborn lock of hair on his forehead. "Er...that's...I don't...um..." He stammered a bit, his usual composure lost in a young teenager's awkwardness in answering that question plainly in front of girls who might suddenly decide to test it. (This wasn't a matter of male arrogance, but of extreme shyness in certain matters; few things were more terrifying to Rossiu than the prospect of romance.)

Don't panic, he tried to tell himself. For the love of all that's holy, do not lost yourself because you're flustered. _Why is it every time I speak in front of these people, I sound like a complete idiot?_ He asked himself. "...That's not important," he finally said, forcing his gut feelings down and putting some emotional distance between him and the situation. He felt better. Yes, it was _IMPROPER _to let your emotions make you do things. It was the _CORRECT THING _to maintain a professional distance at all times, no matter the situation.

He didn't understand these people. He wanted to like them, and he wanted them to like _him, _but that was irrelevant to the matter at hand. He pited them a little; he had to work hard to nudge things then and there, keeping them working together, or they would surely tear themselves apart. They were like children sometimes, little idiot-children that barely understood that sticking a fork in the electrical socket was a Bad Thing, he needed to Be There for them, he needed people to Need Him...

Rossiu was attributing capital letters to a lot of things nowadays. This was starting to worry him.

Seeing Rossiu's brief moment of mental distress (a few weeks and he already knew that Rossiu absolutely _hated _looking weak or vulnerable), Duncan laughed. He'd been having a lot of fun since he'd found out that Rossiu was terminally shy when it came to some things, and he was also trying to find a way to push his buttons even more. "So...North Korea, huh? That's the best sob story you could think of? Geez. I mean, _no one _just gets buried with their parents and spents almost a week with their rotting bits, kid. If you're trying to shock us and make yourself look like some sort of cool psychopath, try some excuse that makes sense!"

Rossiu's expression, usually an unflappable mask, twitched, color rising in his cheeks. His arms dropped, and his hand briefly clenched into a fist hard enough to leave small marks in his palms. (_don't fight, _he warned himself. _punch him and he'll hit back and you'll hit back harder to make him stop and you'll lose it, you won't stop hitting him until he stops moving and you'll STILL be hitting him until he CRUNCHES and CRIES-_)

A thought flickered, one that didn't seem entirely _his_, a whisper of letting go just this once, a promise of relief, vegeance, retribution...he resisted the impulse. "If I wanted to go to the trouble of impressing people," Rossiu said in a bored and utterly monotone voice. "I would better company, and by that, I mean any company that doesn't include you."

Duncan raised an eyebrow. That was a mildly good comeback. The kid wasn't even freaking out or crying or anything.

Geoff grinned at Duncan. "Trying to mouth off to the new kid isn't working so well, yeah?"

"Psh, he was totally gonna swing at me. Wouldn't have gone well for you, by the way, forelock boy."

"Please stop calling me that," Rossiu asked politely.

"Nope!"

"Actually," Courtney said haughtily. "It seemed to work out _fine _for Harold and Cody when _they _punched you out. You know, the _biggest nerds on the show_?"

Duncan glared at her while Beth, Geoff and Justin laughed at Duncan. Gwen supressed a smirk, and even Rossiu permitted himself a light chuckle. "Low blow, Court."

"And it's always the sweetest one."

"Sometimes I wonder how you got this reputation of yours," Rossiu observed.

"Yeah, at least I'm the right age to be here, uh..." Duncan thought fast for a new nickname to annoy Rossiu with. "_Forehead boy_."

It was rare to see Rossiu's masque crack. This was more than a crack; for a brief moment he grimaced. "My head's not big!" He said defensively.

"Oh, so you just have a big brain, and it's pushing your skull out?" Duncan suggested.

"Big and unwieldly!" Justin added.

Gwen winced. "Ow. You just got one from _Justin_. That's gotta suck."

"Hey!" Justin complained.

"...That _is _a new low for me," Rossiu admitted. "And I once spent three straight days lost at sea on a plank of wood in shark-infested waters inhabited by pirates that flew red flags."

Beth stared at him, her eyes wide. (She liked to read pirate stories, so she knew the signicance of red flags; black flags meant that you might be taken prisoner. Red flags meant that the pirates would kill _everyone_.) "Um...wow."

The others stared at him, bemused and frowning. Rossiu was somewhat prone to slipping in anecdotes of his life to date; he didn't seem to be aware that they were invariably unpleasant and quite often horrifying to various extents. There was some debate whether or not he was just making it all up or not. Duncan was one of those who thought he wasn't being truthful. "He's making it up," Duncan said. "Trying to show off to the big TV stars."

Rossiu gave Duncan a long look that creeped him out a little. Duncan wasn't intimidated by Rossiu at all, but sometimes he got a sense that there was something..._different _about the intern, showing in small moments of brief excitement, like a fire burning under a shelf of ice. And this ice was starting to melt, and the fire getting closer to erupting. It wasn't something anyone had seen clearly yet, but Duncan felt instinctively that he had to see what it was. Poking and prodding at Rossiu's buttons seemed a good way to see what that was.

Rossiu, for his part, was thinking dark thought. He hated people making fun of his forehead. He hated it so very much. The priest who had taught Rossiu several years ago, who had taught Rossiu of the virtues of self-control and always doing the Right Thing _no matter what_, had a forehead like that and had sometimes mentioned that the best thing to do was simply treat people base enough to make fun of you as complete non-entities, unworthy of consideration or communication. Rossiu had trouble doing that very thing, but sometimes he wished he ruled the world just so he could have idiots like that imprisoned. Or executed.

It would be nice to do it himself, he thought, an uncharacteristic bitterness flowing through his emotions like a river of acid. Yes. If he had a drill (Rossiu liked drills. He instinctively felt that they were the perfect tools, the sublime metaphor of human nature and it's method of moving forward by piercing all obstaces in it's way) he could just shove it into Duncan's guts and _drill in_, use the shape of Duncan's body against him, let the drill penetrate through skin and muscle and into his stomach, the blood spraying over Rossiu's hands like mana from heaven; let that arrogant punk laugh _then_, let him keep underestimating him, let him _scream _and _bleed _and let the _blood _flow, didn't matter where it flowed from as long as it _flowed_-

it would be so good to _let go_, to stop holding on to the things that kept him back, to just _snap _and _rage _and destroy everything that hurt him or laughed at him or reminded him that he was small and weak and all the things he had let down-

Something was wrong, Rossiu realized. What was he _thinking_?

But the thoughts wouldn't stop, as they reminded him that he wanted to protect so much, but had so little means to do so. Something _outside_ of Rossiu, something strange and huge and vast seemed to suggest that there was a way to protect everything. There were _means _of power beyond temporal authority, as far beyond simple political strength as humanity was beyond a paramecium. Rossiu could have the strength he'd always wanted so badly; he merely had to _let go_, to surrender to his _rage_, his _fury_, and embrace the _chaos _inside, unleash the wind swirling inside him and let it become the endless _storm_-

Rossiu thought he saw the shadows of the room _move_. Like something enormous was crouching in the corners and watching him, something huge and serrated and demonic. Something..._chaotic_.

It would be good, so good, no one else would have to die but his enemies, they would _scream _and _burn _and _bleed_, scream forever begging for the mercy no one had ever given _him_, they would _die_, by his hands they would _break_, and Rossiu would never be weak again-

Rossiu twitched and shut his eyes so tightly it hurt. _NO_, he thought, willing such awful thoughts to cease. They did, but reluctantly, like they were _alive_, grasping and tough and clawing at his mind for the slightest handhold. They were _disgusting _and _foul _and, and his head hurt now like a massive claw had squeezed his brain, but they were back now and _screaming_, screaming to _TRUST _in _Chaos, for in CHAOS all things were POSSIBLE_-

"Uh, Rossiu?" Gwen said, noticing that Rossiu's face had gone unnaturally still and he was staring at Duncan with a murderous blankness. "Uh, what's with-"

Rossiu's eyes flickered, like something was moving inside his skull and trying to push _out_, and his sleeve tore apart in a clean split, like an invisible blade had tore them open. But that was nothing compared to the wet soft chuffing noise that came out of thin air.

"_No_," Rossiu said tightly, speaking to nothing they could see.

Something heard him.

A large and cruel cut appeared on his neck with a steaming and noxious smell, the blood welling up at once.

Rossiu fell back, clutching at his neck and _screaming_. It was like something none of them had ever heard, a feral howl of such bone-deep misery and _pain_. It wasn't something a human throat should have ever made, not a noise designed to be formed with a larnyx or vocal cords he had. It sounded like an animal caught in a bear trap, a cat being skinned alive, and for a moment, Geoff just barely heard an _echo_ in his voice, thousands of voices, of men and women and children and stranger things, all screaming at once, ragged and agonized and tormented and strangely _joyful_; a cacophonic chorus of the damned, reverbating with madness and violent insanity and above all, it was so very monstrously _Chaotic _and _Evil _and he didn't understand why it sounded so _welcoming-_

"No," Rossiu insisted, not really knowing what he was addressing, only that there was _something _there, pulling and prying and the way through was _him_, he couldn't let them through. He muttered proper Latin prayers that he had learned from his lessons before the priest he considered his real father during his time in the Vatican, his hand clutching the faint bulge of the small Roman cross he kept under his shirt.

Something changed. The balance in power shifted, and as if in retaliation, his shirt's shoulder exploded in a blast of fury and sound, and there was _claw marks _there, raw and red and bleeding-

The shadows flickered, just for a moment, and they all saw them; the faintest impressions of something _vast,_ a terrible shape that was either a monster of bloodlust so big it was beyond human comprehension or a enormous crowd mutilated and twisted and _warped _into shapes so innately _wrong _they weren't human anymore...no, it was both, it was neither, it was beyond all knowing and _something was touching them_, the small child in all of them was screaming at the approach of every nightmare they'd ever had coming to get them, they could hear the claws scratching at the walls and the whispers of a thousand bloody jaws-

There was the briefest flash of green, a subtle _twisting_ of things, like the spinning of a drill applied to reality itself, and it was all gone. The shadows were gone. The whispers silent. And only Rossiu bleeding was evidence that anyone abnormal had happened. "Aha," Rossiu said vaugely. "I have done it." He paused. "What did I just do?" He blinked, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell over on the ground unconscious.

There was a brief pause. "Okay," Duncan said. "What the hell was that?"

Courtney shrank back in her chair, staring at the wall and Rossiu bleeding without reason. "I..." She said faintly. "I don't...I can't...I..." There was nothing rational here. Nothing sane or comprehensible she could point at. It was insanity, and her well-organized heart cowered from the madness of it.

Without a word, Geoff got up, moving gingerly and cautiously, as though the world might break into pieces at the slightest movement. His eyes blank and focused, he went over to Rossiu and picked him up. "Hey," He said. "This guy, uh, this guy...he needs help, you know?" Beth got up at once, silent and trembling but keeping her expression absolutely still.

"What?" Gwen said, her brain still singing with the terrible, _awful _things she had witnessed in the privacy of her mind. They were fading now, but she suspected that they would clearer when the nights were fresh and deep, and there she would never forget them. She'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night for the rest of her life, perhaps. Her mind shifted gears - _someone needs help_ - and she got up, perversely glad of a task to divert her attention. "Yeah. Of course, yeah, come on."

"What...?" Justin whimpered, like a small child in a dark forest that had seen the monsters hiding behind the trees, claws and fangs slick with blood. "I don't...what? What?"

Gwen gave him a brief, worried look. "It'd be nice," She said quietly. "If weird stuff stopped happening to us like this."

"Weird?" Courtney said disbelivingly. "No. No. That wasn't 'weird'. 'Weird' is when you lose your wallet and someone just hands it back to you a moment later! 'Weird' is when you talk about a song you like and then it comes on the radio! 'Weird' is when Izzy or Sierra does anything! That was...that was something that didn't happen! Yeah, it was...just something we thought of. Something weird in the food. Yeah." She looked like she desperately wanted it to be true.

Gwen ignored her ramblings. "We need to stop the bleeding or something first," She said. She went over to Duncan. "Hold still," Gwen said, abruptly grabbing Duncan's outer shirt and ripping off a huge patch of it, tearing it into several long strips and went back to Rossiu.

Duncan blinked. "Hey! Not the circumstances I wanted you tearing my shirt off in, you know?" He said weakly, not really able to protest given that someone was probably bleeding to death right there. (And having that...whatever had just happened was good for disorienting you.) Courtney gave him a dirty look. "What?"

Courtney scowled, her expression fading swiftly. "Never mind...jerk."

"Seriously, what?"

Gwen finished helping Beth and Geoff make a tourniquet for Rossiu. "Okay, now we just gotta make it past the deadly traps, roaming beasts and other stupid bits Chris put in this thing!" She said. "Not the hardest thing we've had to do, right?"

Geoff adjusted Rossiu; the kid was surprisingly heavy. "Newp!" Geoff said. "Not like anything's going to make it easier for us-"

At that point, Ezekiel came screaming out from an airvent like he'd been kicked out, slammed into the floor and scrambled to his feet like an ape, freezing just long enough for the others to notice that he looked like he'd been in a fight with a dozen tigers and a blender. He panicked at the sight of the others, and fled out the door, shortly providing a series of screams as he set off the traps.

"...On the other hand, we could always have Ezekiel accidentally activate the traps for us," Beth said.

"Good point," Gwen said. "Let's go!"

"Hey, wait for me!" Geoff said.

They left out the door, Gwen helping to support Rossiu (Beth would have done that too, but she was too short to even reach), leaving Justin alone with Duncan and Courtney. He looked from one to the other. "...Too much tension!" He said, and promptly left, and he locked the door behind him so they could come after him and make things stressful. (Also, if there were demons, then they would eat Duncan and Courtney and be satisfied for a while.)

"Hey!" Duncan said, banging on a door. "What are you doing? LET US OUT OF HERE!" _They're gonna be back_, he thought randomly in his head. _The things are coming BACK and they'll be hungry and angry and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE- _"Who makes a door that locks on the outside!" He screamed in frustration.

(On a distant world far from the reality they knew, a reluctant mad scientist known only as The Mechanist sneezed. His son Teo probably knew his real name, but he hadn't said.)

Courtney snuck up next to him, her arms crossed. "Hang on," She said, looking like swallowing her pride enough for this was physically painful. "I know a bit about locks."

Duncan gave her a look. "More than me?"

"Probably not, but extra hands can't hurt."

Duncan grunted, not wanting to let on how bad he just wanted to _get out, get out, GET OUT OF THERE_. "Fine, okay, let's go!"

And so, a mixture of reluctant teamwork and a spot of small talk ensued, surprisingly easy-going, rather like they had been before Courtney had become more controlling and restrictive. And unseen in the vent, in spite of the fact that they _really _should have been suspicious about Ezekiel's damage levels, Nikigok watched and waited, listening and learning. (He wanted some other stuff he could use alliterative appeal with to, he loved that kind of stuff. Espicially after he'd learned warrior-poeting from the Nac Mac Feegle of the Discworld and become an honorary pictsie.)

Nikigok, in general terms, was a bit concerned now. Not worried, Orks hardly ever worried. But when he saw things like the obvious signs of the Warp trying to break into a fresh and untainted innocent world...he got very close to worrying indeed.

Da Boss needed to know.

...

On an isolated valley in the soutwestern portion of Asia, the Orks were waging war under the command of Da Boss, fielding more extreme methods then they had previously owing to the greater threat against them (still insignificant though) and they were having such great fun at it.

Da Boss himself, standing next to his favorite motorcycle, was waiting for the right moment amid the screams of bullets and Orks and humies striking his ears with sound, the _crump-crump-crump _of the missles the massive numerous tanks (formerly a Leman Russ Eradicator the Orks had stolen from the Imperial Guard and modified) the Orks had fielded smashing into buildings with such rapidity that it sounded like hail striking a bell only magnified by degrees brain-hurting to think about. Chainswords revved and Orks roared as many of them smashed right into the ranks of terrified but fierce humans in gray uniforms and body armor; the humans fought with machine guns and rifles, which were of little use against an Ork's superior resilience and strength. No Ork could be easily felled by machine gun fire, not when their bodies were capable of being blown in half and still functioning, and even that took a internal grenade hit to go that far.

Little bullets like these just wouldn't cut it.

Da Boss watched his Orks go to it, and he grinned; he just loved seeing a good stomping goin' on. His grin faltered a bit, watching one of the Nobz leap over a tank and smash screaming into a few stray soldiers that had banded together; given than a Nob was an Ork that was tough enough and old enough to have gone years undefeated to grow to sizes over ten feet of raging muscle and battle-fury, their screams of dismay were hardly unexpected, soon drowned out by their panicked machine-gun fire and the Nob (named Gorbash, formerly Big Boss Gorbash until Da Boss beat him in a fight and brought him and his warband into Da Boyz) roared a mighty battlecry of "SPOON!" and shoved them out of the way with a single swipe of a mechanical arm several times bigger than it ought to be, sending the poor puny humans going right through a wall.

"WUT!" Gorbash said, the saw-toothed mechanical mishmash that had replaced his lower jaw long ago buzzing loudly. "Dat's all YA GOTS! C'MERE AN' GIMME A _REAL FIGHT!_" He took off into a loping simian gait, his enormous weight leaving massive prints in the ground, and smashed right into the building, the whole thing leaning forward slightly with the damage he had done to it.

Da Boss chuckled. "Dat's not what I calls a proppa fight..." he remarked, hearing the soldier's pleas for mercy. "Oy, Gorbash! Save ya fight for sum humies that can _take _it!"

Gorbash smashed through another wall. "Aw, but I was givvin' 'em such a thumpin'!"

"'Den give dose tanks over dere a thumpin'!" Da Boss said, pointing.

"Eh?" A motorshell flew over Gorbash's head; the geyser of dirt and fire from behind almost knocked him over. "Whoa!" He said, turning towards an advancing line of tanks the enemy was fielding. "Things iz getting GOOD!" He raised his mechanical arm, which ended in a Power Klaw, an oversized pincer-claw with all manner of cables and hissing vents all over the place, and grabbed one of Da Boyz's tank that had come to close and raised it overhead like a shield, the Ork gunner on-board roaring joyfully and firing madly. (But then he would have done that anyway.) "_DA WORD SAYZ YOUZ GOIN' DOWN!_" Gorbash roared, and charged forward, using his free arm to unholster a machine gun the size of a tree trunk and firing wildly, the bullets bigger than a human head, and he balanced the tank on his shoulder, the Orks on-board taking the oppertunity to start shooting with the slightly greater balance Gorbash now afforded them.

"De're steppin' up wif da fight!" Da Boss said, cheering Da Boyz on and whipping them into a frenzy with the promise of good fighting. "Good! _GOOD!_ Perfeck! No matter what dey throws at us, we'll smash through and _STOMP 'EM GOOD!_ Aint' dat right, Boyz!"

"HELL YEAH!" The Orks across the valley, now scarred and increasingly broken from the battle, roared. The bunker located at the far end of the valley, their target and host to the enemies they were hunting down this time, seemed to shudder.

The Orks charged; from above, on bi-planes made from scrap-metal and old cars and engines as big as the Orks were or by simply strapping themselves into rockets and shooting themselves into the ranks of men behind the tanks, trusting in their superior resilience to live through the experience. (They did.) From below, drill-faced machines burrowing underground in violent sprays of dirt and stone right underneat the tanks. And those who simply raced across the battlefield, on Orkish motorcycles that were little more than engines bigger than the Orks themselves with two wheels and a whole lot of weapons bolted down, hulking all-terrain vehicles, oversized artillery shooters on spiked wheels and, of course, tanks. The Orks loved tanks.

They had not yet begun to fight properly. The Orks fought. It was was they did. It was what they were for, instinctive battlejoy and combat know-how planted deep in their DNA from countless millenia ago, from the days of what other species called the Great Old Ones and what the Orks themselves called the Brain-Boyz. An ancient war had been fought, and the Orks were one of the living weapons fielded by their makers; they lived now when the Great Old Ones had faded into extinction, having made a phyrric victory of their foes the Necrontyr. The Orks fought, survived and built what they needed for surviving and fighting, but they had rarely _thought_. They had never considered if they were fighting the right people, or if they could be building better things for the Orks to come or fighting good enough for the Orks that had come before.

That was before Da Boss. He had made them think. They were...different. All Da Boyz knew that; Da Boss had made them _better_. And it was good, and they wished to make the whole multiverse smart like them. They would show the multiverse what was wrong and what was right and _destroy _that which was wrong, and do it the only way they knew: with unrelenting, needless excessive and absolutely insane scales of brutal _force_.

(It was Da Orky Way.)

As it was, few of Da Boys were strictly aware of who they fighting right now, and they didn't much care; it was a bad guy, and Da Boss didn't like what he was doing, and that was the same thing as far as they were concerned. A stompin' needed to happen. For that matter, Da Boss didn't actually know _who _he was fighting, but he did know that this was the biggest cartel on this part of the continent, was runnin' the biggest human trafficking ring on the continent and made a ton of money from it, enough to field a personal army to protect their investments, and Da Boss resented it when people lived high and mighty off of people suffering. (And they had a lot of nice things Da Boyz had their eyes on. Da Boys had gone to war for flimsier reasons, and with Da Boss aiming them like a cannon, their own primitive moral compasses, freshly grown thanks to Da Boss enlightening them with many thumpings and being an inspirational badass spurring them on, they were going through them like, as Gritzgrotz put it, 'Enuff dakka with lotsa blasty going through squig-poo'.)

Da Boss glanced up and took a step sideways; a green screaming blur came smashing into where he had been standing, the dust passing as it proved itself to be Bitz, his new mechanical eyes blasting las-beams at distant enemies while he pulled a pair of sparking rockets off his back and throwing them with such force that they hit an enemy tank and bent the turret out of shape just before four Orks came screaming on motorcycle and smashed into it, tore the hatch off the top and dove screaming into it to commandeer it. (Human screaming ensued.) "Eyes working good, Bitz?"

"I can see smells now!" Bitz said; one of his eyes was an oversized piece like a monicle, a tiny chip of power crystal plug into processing devices on the side so it could shoot lasers. The other eye was smaller and narrower, designed for more precise data-gathering work, and the effect was that Bitz had a permanent psychotic squint, the kind that other Orks had to practice at before they got it right. "And I think I can smell wet ugly, but I bets dat's just da skull-crackin' I've been taking."

"Ooh, what does my smell look like!"

"Like yaz on fire." Bitz paused, and because things tended to happen when Da Boss was on the battlefield, added, "Again."

"Fire? Yeeeah, FIRE! _FIRE! LIKE THE BURNING FLAME OF MY __**SOUL!**_" Da Boss pulled his head back and let loose a mighty yell, the ground twisting up around him from his proximity. "Hell yeah, HELL YEAH! Now I'm all fired up! Bitz, long as yaz here, go and get da rest of da Nobs! Dey still mopping up dose humies in clanky-bits dey sent at us?"

Bitz' eyes _whirr_ed, magnifying at a battle in the distance. There were several explosions, a completely demolished bunker, and at least ten Nobs of varying size and shape making life living hell for a number of humans in experimental powered armor that, as it turned out, wasn't just enough to deal with the biggest and toughest Orks around. "Almost." There was another explosion. "Wait...wait..." Several more explosions, followed by roars of triumph. "Newp, they're done!"

"Go and get dem, 'kay? I'mma gonna clear da path for yaz, lessen Gritzgrotz gets here with da Sqiggoths first!"

Bitz snorted. "Wot, dese puny humies worth da Squiggoths?"

Da Boss shrugged. "Dey're lonely up dere all the time, dey need some time ta fight even if it ain't a proppa scrap!" Bitz nodded. "I'm off," Da Boss announced, unsheathing his mighty chainsword from his back and slamming it on the ground, cracking the earth underneath. He fired it up, and even though the spinning blades weren't in contact with the ground, a wickedly harsh cut tore through the dirt regardless. "'ERE I GO!" Da Boss shouted, jumping aboard his favorite motorcycle (converted from the still-functional main fire cannon of a Lemun Russ Devastator, only with engines, some power-maces on chains, big ol' monster truck wheels and jumpjets attacked) and revved it up, the truck-sized 'cycle screaming to life as green energy crackled from Da Boss.

Bitz carefully stepped aside as the wheels spun on, the rivets on them extending into little drills, and the Dakkacycle (as Da Boss fondly called his motorcyle) tore off. "...I wants one too," he complained before he trundled off to go get the Nobs.

On the opposite side of the alignment grid (from Chaotic Good to Lawful Evil), Sergeant Yang, having recently been promoted to tank-brigade commander after the last one got blown up, was having a very bad week. First his girlfriend dumped him. Then his dog ran away and came back with a live bear. Then he misplaced his favorite coffee mug, and now big green alien monsters were engaging all out war with his less-than-strictly-legal employers, which was a considerable step down in the whole 'horrific turns of bad luck' in his life.

"Men, hold the line!" He said, mainly because it seemed like a good idea. "And...uh...live. I guess. Because we won't have anyone to man the tanks if you're dead or whatever. Um. Yeah. God, I suck at inspiring the troops."

"We're fighting aliens monsters armed with giant guns, giant guns on wheels, and use _chainsaw swords _as basic melee weapons," His co-pilot, a stoic young lady named Mei Fong remarked. "There's not a whole lot you could say to make them _want _to fight." (Little did she knew, there was a whole _army _of people that did just that on a daily basis, and their numbers dwarfed Earth's entire population. Not that she knew that.)

"At least we've exhausted all their surprises!" Sergeant Yang said hopefully, firing the main cannon again and again, breaking a line in the oncoming horde of Orks, when they abruptly scattered as the ground started to tremble under the footsteps of giants. "What the-?"

"Sir, I think something's coming," their tank's gunner said. "I don't _HOLY HELL WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT!_"

"_GUESS WHO BROUGHT DA BIG BOYZ?_" Gritzgrotz shouted from his place atop a mighty metal thing resembling a riveted-and-folded howdah pretty much made of armor-plated machines that were really there to hold, maintain and fuel weapons of all sorts: plasma rifles, gatling lasers, intention-guided mininukes, napalm grenade-launching Heavy Incinerators, wide-scale flamethrowers, steam-powered rifles that shot nails that tore the fabric of the universe to summon more guns that shot more guns that shoot nails and so on. The Ork sat atop a crude but effective gunner's seat on it, with a little fan to cool him (it was hot up there) and a beer-drinking-hat, because he loved his beer-drinking-hat. Also, he had a sniper's rig for a weapon that shot giant chakrams with rotating chainsaw-blades on them and he was having a marvelous time with them. (Da Boss had determined that _these _humies were so rotten, Da Boyz would be a disgrace if they held back. Da Boyz were ecstatic.)

All of that wasn't the impressive (and utterly terrifying) bit. The _really _impressive (and utterly terrifying) bit was the fact that this heavily-armed howdah was securely fastened to the back of a monstrously big _thing _that looked like nothing less than a sixty-foot tall dinosaur (vaugely similar to a predator sauropod with a shorter neck), it's footfalls hitting the earth like the tread of a beast-god, the short blunt claw tearing up tracts of dirt and uprooting trees too small for it to even notice, only to fall from it and rain to the ground and be smashed underfoot as it marched on in a distinctive leaning gait. It's body, low-slung and bulging with enormous muscles under the dark green mosiac of it's scales and the overlapping plated-armor the Orks had protected it with, barely seemed to notice the weight of the howdah at all, the only concession to it's burden a shifting of it's weight to it's sturdier back legs. It's head, not unlike the Orks it was partially descended from if reptilian and longer, swayed a bit under the weight of the metal plates on it's skull and probably the gunner platform's mounted on the sides of it's head so that a trio of Orks could operate the long-range zap guns on the tucks extending from it's lower jaw as well as the larger horn on it's head.

It was a Squiggoth, the largest of the various Squigs breeds the Orks bred for food, companionship and other stuff, and it was _bored_. (And with anything even slightly Orky, this is a very dangerous time to be near it.)

"...Seriously? _Seriously? _Are they fielding a miniature fortress on top of a goddamn _DINOSAUR!_" Sergeant Yang screamed, pulling at his hair in utter disbelief. "The aliens have _ALIEN DINOSAURS!_"

"Sure," Said Colonel Fong. "Dinosaurs make everything better. Well, not for us, but you know. Why wouldn't the aliens have any?"

"That's...I can't...it's not...YOU HURT MY BRAIN."

Gritzgrotz took a long, deep sip from his beer-drinking-hat. "I AM BORED NOW! BOB, GO GET 'EM!"

The Squiggoth, who was named Bob, roared in affirmation (unaware that being _asked _to attack the enemy by his handler rather than being abused into fighting was a singular thing for an Ork battlebeast) and charged, the various gunner's manning his weapons firing randomly at anything that moved. Including Orks. _Espicially _other Orks. (Da Boss hadn't quite broke them of that habit yet. It was on his to-do list, right between _Wake up the Emperor of Mankind and beat him up until he quits being a jerkass about aliens _and _Find all Orks in the galaxy back home, teach 'em the Right and Proppa, and throw a Waaugh! Aim said Waaaugh! at the Tyranids, film proceeding battle and sell it for PROFIT._) Bob, who wasn't the best trained Squiggoth around, went right for the first thing he saw, a random tank that happened to be piloted by Bitz after he'd found it empty of it's human pilots (having fled in sheer terror from the alien dinosaur-thing).

Bob ran right for it, his footfalls shaking the ground like miniature quakes. "Why's all dis rumbling?" Bitz asked himself. He looked out and saw Bob coming. "Oh. Dat's why." Bob roared, pulling his head back and flipping the tank into the air with his horn, sending it flying across the battlefield. "Wheee!" Bitz said, his tank firing off a few shots and taking out a few powered-armor men as it went before it smashed past the tank lines. This served his purposes well enough, as the tanks now had the enemy right in their blind spots. This was a very fatal occurance, very quickly.

Da Boss grinned as he accelerated to a speed well in excess of _stupid-fast_. "Heh. Ya beat me to it!" He called out as he rolled up to Bob, weaving in and out of the beast-titan's falling footsteps, effortlessly dodging several tons of scaly beastfeet and claws bigger than he was because he was cool like that, occasionally getting flipped into the air by the small shockwaves of Bob's footsteps only to land the right way and keep going. "Where's da rest of da big boyz!"

"We gots Shredface and the Bigga Dok moppin' up some surprise tanks from behind!" Gritzgrotz said, firing a few chainsaw-frisbees at choice-looking targets. "And we got Boota coming right up! Got ya stompa and everythin'!"

"Hot damn!" Da Boss said, driving far to the side. "We'z gonna make a spektakle a' dis, Gritzgrotz! Show da whole world Da Right an' Proppa!"

"'Course! Yaz Da Boss!"

Da Boss grunted in annoyance, so piqued he broke away from the battle to start pulling back so hard that the Dakkacycle flipped into the air; the moment it's tail end faced the ground again, Da Boss engaged the jet-jumpers and green fire blazed from the glowing discs near the rear, sending it shooting straight up into the air like a rocket, spinning gently through the air. The wheels slammed into Bob's armor, Bob himself none the wiser, and Da Boss _drove straight up Bob's side_, not falling off or hitting a bad jump or anything stupid like that because he was just that awesome.

From a distance, he might have been seen as a tiny speck on the side of the Squiggoth, driving up in a more or less straight line until he reached the howdah, running out of surface area to keep moving around on and went flying into open space. Being sixty feet up with no appreciable way of surviving the fall didn't bother him much, as he just hit the jet-jumpers again and fired himself over the howdah like a ballistic missle, spinning the whole way thanks to the perilously unstablized devices.

Gritzgotz was justifiably surprised when Da Boss came right out of nowhere, nearly a ton of weaponized machine designed for offense and speed sailing right overhead, right before Da Boss gave Gritzgrotz such a thump on the head. "Hey hey hey hey hey, stop calling me 'Da Boss'!" He shouted, time seeming to stand still. "I ain't da Warboss ta beat ya stupid, or a Warlord that jest wants ta kill everythin' including da boyz wif me! I'm _better den DAT! _Yaz boyz are my _SOUL-BROTHERS! IF YAZ GONNA CALL ME ANYTHING, YAZ GONNA CALL ME __**BRO!**_"

Gritzgrotz, a relative addition to Da Boyz, came to a decision and met the humie's still out-stretched fist in a brotherly gesture. "You gots it, Kah-Mee-Nah!"

Da Boss (or rather, Kah-Mee-Nah) rolled his eyes as he went on falling over the opposite side of Bob, the Squiggoth completely oblivious to all of this due to being engaged in trying to eat a tank because he was stupid that way. "Good enuff!" Kah-Mee-Nah said, a bit annoyed with the difficulty his Ork brothers had in saying his actual name right. (It had been so many years since he'd been around humans to call him by his proper name for a long time, but he would never forget his own name. He _never _forgot names.) "Break the line of da tanks! BREAK RIGHT THROUGH AND SHOW DA HUMIES SOME HEROIC SPIRIT!"

Gritzgrotz snarled agreeingly as Kah-Mee-Nah nosedived back to the ground, a jump-jet propelling him that much faster because it was taking too long, and he shouted a mighty and primal cry of "_**WAAUGH!**__"_ as he accelerated his freefall, aiming himself for the lead tank like a missle, green energy coursing around him like a twisting aura.

It started with a single roar, backed up by Kah-Mee-Nah, and it echoed in every Ork there. They were _Da Orkz_; they were made for _FIGHTING _and _KILLING_. War was their life, their love, their very reason for being. But their beloved leader Kah-Mee-Nah had _changed _them, and so to had the nature of the Waaugh _itself_. Something even greener than what old-time Yellerz called Da Big Green, like the white-hot screaming passion of Gork and Mork themselves; it struck every Ork there, from the biggest Nob to the puniest Gretch and even the squiggly beasts, and inflamed the smallest echo of true Orkiness and amplified it into a raging _inferno_.

Green burned in them, blasting out from around them like emerald fires that last for only a moment. But it was only a visible demonstration, and there was far more to it than flash. Each Ork, whether Gretch, Shoota Boy, Burna Boy, Nob, Mek Boy, Weird Boy, Pain Dok and all the other countless castes of Ork present there, felt it. The power of their beloved leader's passion concentrated into a single shout energized them _all_.

They shouted, all at once, in a mighty cry that brought furiously happy tears from a few of them (even though Orks weren't supposed to be able of tears), the very essence of the gods coursing through them and quaking in bodies that were suddenly mightier than a gargant and stronger than the biggest Squiggoth; they felt, for a single pure instant of white-hot _glory_, that they all burned with the same fire that drove Kah-Mee-Nah, the same resolve and spirit that kept him going on in a galaxy they now knew to be grim and dark and so very awful in it's monstrousness and that it was their duty to make it _better _and it was the fault of people like the ones they were fighting that it was so.

They shouted with one voice, their minds bleeding together into a vast war machine bonded by sheer unstoppable resolve and fighting spirit, and guding it like a precision bullet was Kah-Mee-Nah.

You could almost pity all those that stood in their way.

Sergeant Yang cowered in horror as the Orks fought on. He had done terrible things, for his job. He knew perfectly well just what sort of men and women he worked for; he just never cared, and neither had all the men and women under his command, generally being mercenaries hired for this army or corporate terrorists for hire that liked the exorbitant amounts of money they got out of it.

For some reason, in that brief blaze of green and that incredible shout, he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have killed so many people. Maybe he should have thought about not putting a bullet in the head of that one priest that wouldn't pay up, or setting that crowded apartment building on fire with it's inhabitants trapped inside (he remembered that one well; he'd been stuck in a hotel in the area and it took _weeks _for the smell of roasting human flesh to get out of his nose) or raiding that one rural village and taking all the able-bodied men and women in chains and shooting everyone else...

His hands shook. "...We're going to die," He said suddenly. "Yes. We're _going to die_..." He narrowed his eyes. "But that idiot with his monsters dies too."

"Sir?" Colonel Fong said.

"Charge them. We die standing."

She nodded grimly. "...Yes, sir."

"You know, we're all sitting down, so we, uh, _can't _die standing-" The gunner said unhelpfully.

"Shut up, it's a figure of speech," Sergeant Yang said.

He could see it all now; they would charge, right into the horde of monsters. They were one tank. They were going to die, and die _gloriously_. These monsters would remember them forever, remember this tank and it's crew in their nightmares forever, their leader dead and gone, yes, that would be a fitting memorial for themselves-

An odd sound interrupted his musings. "What the...oh no."

Something blazing green hit the ground several dozen feet from him, slamming into it hard enough to throw a shockwave that send a cascade of dirt into the tank hard enough to send it off-course and stop it dead in it's tracks, and a massive explosion sent another one, a geyser of fire and dirt fountaining up before raining down-

A shape tore out of it, and their tank was still sufficiently forward enough for the crew to gape in disbelief when they saw that it was a _monster-motorcycle that was on FIRE _and bearing right down on them, a pair of massively oversized blades on either side of the front wheel, and moving so fast that the air was breaking around it.

"What? WHAT? WHAAAT!" Sergeant Yang howled. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS-"

He, and indeed, his life, was cut off in midword, the flaming Dakkacycle slicing right through it, it's wheelblades and extreme speed, cutting right through it with a brief tortured scream of metal, sections of tank sliced away in seconds until it lurched back from the impact, it's crew dead, falling back in two neat little halves as a last-second reaction from Sergeant Yang sent a final motor shell flying up into the sky to arc down eventually, and then a timely push of the jumper-jets gave the Dakkacycle a short jump that also threw the tank halves up into the air, where Gritzgrots fired a blast of plasma that exploded them in mid-air.

Kah-Mee-Nah kept going, the fire around him winking out due to being smothered from the dirt he was plowing through. "DAT'S THE TANKS DOWN!" He said, his Dakkacycle on a straight course for the bunker's their enemy were hiding in (possibly so they could avoid sensible people asking them how the hell they could afford to buy tanks and powered suits of armor and outfit an army when they were supposed to be running a criminal enterprise, that sort of thing takes up your time) and he fired a single shell from his Dakkacycle's main bodygun that flew screaming across the battlefield, over the heads of the remaining soldiers (now in a bit of a panic for obvious reasons) and heading for the front of the bunker.

The motor shell fired in Sergeant Yang's last moment came down; Kah-Mee-Nah glanced up and spun the Dakkacycle around, readying and revving up his chainsword in a single motion, and without breaking his incredible speed, cut the missle in half, ignoring all the laws of physics that should have had it explode messily right there, doing it with a single swipe that sent both halves spinning at two misfortunate squads that had picked the wrong day to continue working for massive violators of human rights, mainly because they exploded in great bit chunks when the missle halves exploded.

Kah-Mee-Nah hit the brakes (a humie idea, no Ork would even conceive of brakes) and skidded to a stop, his displaced velocity finding a release in a mighty blast of flame from the sparks he sent up. (There was no reason it should be so, only that it was cool and that Kah-Mee-Nah treated physics like most people treated mildly annoying guidelines.) This was just in time for the shell he had launched moments ago to crash into the front of the bunker with a massive explosion, a backlash of bone-pulverizing force and dust smashing out (it was quite fortunate that Kah-Mee-Nah and his Boyz were a safe distance away, but the same could not be said about the remaining soldiers) and when the light and dust faded, the entire bunker was leaning over a bit, a gaping hole that was still molten-red at the edges melted in the wall. It was just barely big enough to admit something huge; not big enough for a Squiggoth, but something smaller, surely.

There was a tremendous thud; Kah-Mee-Nah waited patiently for his own Squiggoth to come to an awkward halt a short distance from him, bearing a mighty compact machine-titan on his back. "Hey," Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Boota! Ya made it!"

Boota was, as Squiggoths went, unusually small, barely forty feet in height, his stout and compact body covered in wooly green fur and his legs built for endurance rather than speed or strength, thick and powerful and ending in sharper claws than Squiggoth's normally had. His tail was short and twisted up into a piglike squiggle, spiraling behind his rear. His head was quite unusual, wide and with a prominent snout, dense clusters of teeth visible in his prim little mouth and a pair of shovel-like tusks extending from his cheekbones. His eyes, small and round and much more unnervingly intelligent than a Squiggoth's ought to be, were protected from the sun by a pair of round sunglasses specially made for him.

"Awright," Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Let's do it! We'll go an'-" He heard a ringing. He blinked, wondering if someone had hit him, and then he remembered the phone he'd rigged up, and he also remembered who had the _other _phone they'd made. "Wait a tick." He answered it and said,. "Yo, dis iz me.""

"Big bro!" The excitable voice of Nikigok said, distorted a bit by interference but perfectly audible. "It'z me, reportin' in from da airship with dose kidz ya likes!"

"Figured that much. Give it ta me straight, we'z in the middle of some stompin' here!"

"Ooh, anything good?"

"Nah, just some cowards with no proppa strength in da head, body and espicially da heart, ya knows? But we'z givvin' da Squiggoths a workout, an' evverybody's havin' fun. So it's a win-win. And gettin' rid of these grots will take this world a good way towards da Right and Proppa! Oh," He added as an afterthouht. "I figure the loot we'll pull off this will take us a long way towards that party we'z gotta pull. Treat da Orky humies right, you know?"

"Yeah!" Nikigok agreed.

"Right. So what's it?" Nikigok had been giving him usual reports, frequently when something important had happened. (Kah-Mee-Nah also watched the episodes when they aired, but frankly, the ruthless extremes the kids were being up through was making him really annoyed and put him in the mood for a stompin'.)

"Da Chaos is comin'. Maybe here already."

Kah-Mee-Nah said nothing for a moment. "...What happened?"

Nikigok told him everything he had seen in that little room. The rise of the shadows, the way the intern Rossiu had been cut up by something that hadn't even been there, the way they all acted like their _minds _were hurt...Kah-Mee-Nah heard it all, and he understood the implications immediately.

There was also a briefer but equally interesting matter. "Dat gurl an' da boy yaz interested in?" Nikigok said. "Dey've almost figured us out!"

"Hah?"

"Dey'z putting it all together. Dey'z goin' crazy from not sleeping, but they've worked it out. They almost know that we'z after Da Right and Proppa! _Dey know what yaz wants from everyun'!_" Nikigok sounded excited. "Jest like ya wuz hopin'!"

"...Heh. I knew those humies wuz smart, but pickin' up on me already? Heh. Heh! Hah hah hah! PERFECT! That fits with Da Plan perfeck-like!"

"Really?"

"Hells yeah! Looks like I gots ta change things up a bit,; dey wuz bein' touched in da '_eads_, from da Chaoz boyz tryin' ta peel through, looks like!"

"From dat humie with the big forehead?" Nikigok asked shrewedly.

"...Looks like. And he pushed da Chaos _away_. Dat's interestin'. Hardly ever hear of humies doing _that_." Kah-Mee-Nah grinned. "Dis Rossiu sounds _interestin'_. Nikigok! If da Chaoz iz moving dis fast, we'z gonna have ta step things up too! Lookz like jest fighting da Good Fight ain't enough to beat dis world back from da Chaoz, so I figgure Da Boyz iz goin' ta have ta step up our planz for da Total Drama kidz."

"Whaaat?" Nikigok said. "Yaz mean...yaz comin' HERE!"

"Yep; first we gotz to finish up here and do sum shoppin'. For da big party and all. And wot's a party widdout guests!" Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Keep a good eye on t'ings, Nikigok! We'z gonna be dere soon enough, yaz hears? Stay outta sight and mind, an' before yaz knowz it we'll be there ta kick some awesome inta dem!"

"Yaz gotz it, Kah-Mee-Nah!" Nikigok said smartly. "I'll get it done!"

"I knowz ya can! Believe in me, Nikigok! Believe in da me dat believes in you!"

"Alwayz!" Nikigok promised, and hung up.

Kah-Mee-Nah put his phone away and noticed that the battle had been raging on without him, and was nearly done. "Boyz!" He called out. They looked up. "Let's go finish this in style, and den go give da _TOTAL DRAMA KIDZ A HELLO!_" Boota, having protectively been skulking near Kah-Mee-Nah, peered up as Kah-Mee-Nah grinned. "Boota!" He announced. "We'll finish this together!"

Boota roared agreement, and Kah-Mee-Nah's Dakkacycle came screaming back to life and roared down to the bunker, Boota shortly behind him and the rest of Da Boyz catching up. Boota caught up pace with him, and together, the woolly Squiggoth and Kah-Mee-Nah smashed through into the gaping hole, easily fitting through, followed by Da Boyz, the screaming host of Orks roaring right after.

Da Boyz did their thing, and it was _awesome_.

Overlooking the valley, Death looked down, his eyes like miniature stars. Sergeant Yang and his men stood behind him, their heads bowed. "This is gonna suck worse, isn't it?" He asked Death, trembling in terror. When you died, it stripped away all your illusions. Yang could see..._everything _he'd done, in perfect clarity and understanding.

THAT MAY BE, Death said. AND IT MAY BE NOT.

"...Really?"

IT IS ENTIRELY DEPENDANT ON YOU. AND YOU MAY YET CONSIDER YOURSELVES LUCKY.

"How?"

Death peered down on Yang, and Yang felt very small indeed. YOU WILL NOT BE THERE WHEN THE TIDES OF CHAOS WASH UPON THESE SHORES.

"What...what do you mean?"

IT IS BETTER THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW, Death said patiently. Yang cowered and bowed his head, leaving it be. AND NOW, YOU WILL COME WITH ME.

Yang's story ended there, but for better or worse is another matter.

(Fortunately, he believed in reincarnation. Unfortunately, it works in mysterious ways, and he was born backwards in time. As one of the interns from Total Drama World Tour. Specifically, the one that was eaten alive by scarabs. But that wasn't enough punishment to absolve his karma, and he was next reborn as a man destined to join the Imperial Guard. And _that _was a fate cruel enough to absolve his karma. Several dozen times over.)

And life went on. For some people, obviously not those guys. But they were jerks, so it all balanced out.

...

A/N: The tone of the story is starting to change a little, isn't it? I intended a goofy humor story of curbstomping...and now it's turning into more of a, well, Warhammer 40K story! Not surprising though, and I'm gonna do my hardest to keep the tone light! Also, since the title doesn't really fit, I'm changing the title of the story to 'All The Stars In The Sky' or ATSITS for short. (Makes it easier to mention in PMs, I can tell you that!)

Just what is Chris up to? It's not nice, I can tell you that.

The scene with those two fishermen started out longer, but I cut it short because...well, they're just a pair of random guys to witness Kamina and Da Boyz breaking through. Originally, that was also the first scene in this chapter, but I added the one with the Total Drama guys and girls to better fit the story. To make my point, this isn't a competition story, and frankly by this point, the Total Drama kids really wouldn't WANT it to be. This version of the game is MEAN.

Funny thing about the bit with Cody and Sierra; it was originally a scene about Harold discussing the whole thing with some of the others. I changed it to make it more personal and to emphaize Sierra and Cody a bit, who are, in a way, the main Total Drama characters here. Also..er, yeah, the idea of Cody becoming more dependant on Sierra was a plot bunny that seemed right. I remember reading a bit on TV Tropes the kind of mental deconstruction that goes on in Total Drama (explaining the Character Derailment); it's hard, you're surronded by people you don't like or distrust, conditions are hard, the food is unhealthy and you're in real danger of DYING. The most sucessful campers are the ones that can take it. (Like, say, Owen.) In this case, Cody and Sierra are dealing with the even worse conditions on the airship by buddying up to a degree that clearly scares poor Noah. (So's Izzy. Poor guy.) Also, I believe this marks me pushing the Coderra element from 'subtle' to 'what subtlety?'.

I like Rossiu. Thus, I'm doing my hardest to keep him recognizable as a character but distinct from his Gurren Lagann characterization. I'm tending towards his behavior towards the second half of the series, but tending towards Lawful Good. Even so, it seems that a Gurren Lagann character is still too intense to fit in among Total Drama fellows just yet.

Looks like Beth might have a little crush on Rossiu. (Even though she has a boyfriend, but no big deal. I mean, she's not like _Duncan_.)

Chaos is coming. But it tried to use Rossiu first. Bit of a mistake there. Yeah, Chaos, try to break through using the _Lawful Good _Knight Templar Well-Intentioned Extremist. Yeah, _GREAT IDEA_.

I'm going to start treating Chaos with more of a 'cosmic horror' vibe, as I already should have in my initial thoughts. Poor Total Drama kids; they're gonna have to face off against the living embodiment of Chaotic Evil itself, a foul horror that taints and corrupts all it touches, fueled by the souls of billions and empowered by a grim dark future of war. Fortunately, they have Kamina and his Orks on his side, so that evens things up.

That big scene with the Orks curbstomping that army? Yeah. I LOVE epic crazy fights.

Readers of Fullmetal Alchemist may be familiar with the Memetic Badassery of Wrath who, it is often said, 'killed a tank with a SWORD'. More accurately, he killed the tank's crew with the sword and used a grenade to blow it up. Kamina (whose proper name I'm saving for a more epic time) killed a tank with a weaponized MOTORCYCLE. In a single move. And then he blew up some guys by cutting a missle in half. Now _that's _badass.

I turned Boota into a Squiggoth. Possibly the craziest thing I've done so far that isn't my reimagining of Traverse Town.

What does Kamina have in mind for the Total Drama kids? Probably nothing too horrible or insane. But then again...this is the same guy who rides a giant gun on wheels into battle, climbs up a Squiggoth to give it's rider a dope-slap for not being brotherly enough and intends to awesomize Cody. He's so awesome it's _stupid_, and vice versa.


	4. Breaking and Entering

Well, it's been a bit of a fairly long time since my last update, but the important thing is I'm actually_ updating _(with GUSTO! You can't go wrong with gusto. Except when you do) and I've got genuine plot develoupments! The Orks being awesome! Kamina being...Kamina! More Death cameos! Cameos from _other _series that are really, really awesome! And the power of voodoo. Sort of.

But before any of that, there's a small reminder of why it sucks to be attacked by Chaos.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything I don't own.

...

Night had fallen long since the Rossiu had been brought to the infimiry (or, more accurately, a large room in a defensible area that the contestants had coerced a few interns that knew medicine to hanging around in just in case something _bad _happened) by Geoff and the rest, and there had not been a great deal of improvement in his condition, though most of the contestants were unaware of his situation and thus could do nothing, even those inclined to do so. And Beth was the only one who knew about how it was progressing.

It was probably for the best that only a very few knew about what had happened to him only a few hours ago, and what had been happening to him since. Geoff knew nothing of it, having trusted the would-be medics to do their job. Neither did any of the others, as news passed slowly on the airship owing to all the killer robots and wild animals and deadly traps and also Ezekiel. (Though he was becoming less prone to attacking them all the time, though they didn't know if it was his humanity starting to come back or just him learning from the beatings he received.) Not many of them would be inclined to think kindly of Rossiu to begin with, owing to the stigma of being associated with Chris and his unspecified but no doubt evil schemes and suspected of being intimately involved in whatever it was. (Admittedly, it was mostly Alejandro and Heather who believed this and had spread the theory around. On the other hand, those two _knew _evil.)

If anyone but Beth knew what had happened to him since the..._event_, any doubts about his loyalties would be shoved aside in favor of basic humanity; nobody deserved to go through _that_.

(_The corridor echoed with his screams. Pitched higher than seemed usual for a boy as old as he was, going ragged and abruptly diminishing to choking whimpers that sounded horribly _wet_, and all so often punctuated by small splatters, meaty chunks hitting the walls with considerable force._)

The 'medics' had long since left, insisting that they could do _nothing _for him and had fled for parts unknown. (Possibly involving parachutes and airlocks. Work experience wasn't worth _this_ horrorshow.) Upon reflection, Beth thought, it wasn't unexpected. Those 'medics' knew first-aid, they knew the basics of resetting bones and the details of blood loss and how to treat basic concussions (these all being increasing pernitent skills in the current atmosphere), but none of them knew _real_ medicine. No one was a surgeon of any quality, and certainly none of them were qualified to treat Rossiu.

(_Behind the screams there is an awful _growling _noise, a wet gibbering echoing behind his noises, so quiet and faint that the creaking of the leather straps were louder. It sounds like something trying to move it's way through a tight space and frustrated at how little purchase it had._)

It had started bad; his shoulder a lacerated mess like claw marks from a beast that couldn't exist, a cthonic conspiracy of every nightmare-thing that had ever dwelled in the nightmares of madmen, and Rossiu's still twitching and whispering things about a many-faced machine-god made of green fire bigger than worlds, and all the while his body trembled with infection and feverish chills, his muscles spasming so violently they had to restrain him, but it had gotten worse after that

(_When there are splatters, there are also solid _thumps_ where the metal table lurches just a little bit from the force of his spasms. It's bumped away from the wall and hit a hastily set-up stand until it fell over with a clattering of dozens of little instruments, and it was still quieter that the sounds of Rossiu screaming like his insides are tearing themselves apart, eating each other and vomitting themselves up as good as new before doing it all over again...and again...and again...)_

Beth had thought she'd known what fear was. Over the last hour and a half, she had learned that when you were utterly helpless and could do nothing but watch something slowly dying in such pain that you _prayed _they would just _die _and stop hurting so much, it was quite different watching it happen to a person than an animal like she was used to.

Beth knew quite a lot about certain forms of medicine. She'd grown up on a farm and been responsible for a lot of animals. She'd seen her fair share of awful things then, and had fixed them when she could. (_And_, a certain cold thought kept reminding her. _when it had been neccesary, when recovery was a fool's dream and there was too much pain, she had...helped them._) She knew how to do basic medicine well enough on animals and she'd thought that she could do the same for Rossiu (she didn't think there was _too _much of a difference between pigs and people when it came to _just right under _the skin, really); thought she could patch him back up and maybe make him a little bit nicer and not acting like he was waiting for someone to _hit _him or even like they would wise up and stop being silly all the time.

She'd tried to help him. She'd _tried_, even long after the limits of her knowledge had been stretched to the murky horizons of guesses and desperate hopes. And then she'd gotten the blood off her hands and trying not to be sick and not think about what was happening to Rossiu and _how was that even physically possible_?

Her legs trembled so much her kneees knocked against each other hard enough to hurt. Beth hugged herself tight so she wouldn't shiver and it was hard not to cry. The screaming _hurt_, but not as badly as the certain knowledge that she couldn't do anything to help him.

(_There is ONE thing_, a cold voice whispered, and old acts and memories came to her, rememberences of the baby animals that weren't born awake and the broken legs so infected that they went rotten and the other quiet and shameful time the only thing that could be done for them was to _end _it. She whimpered and tried to ignore the suggestion, because it sounded like a good idea when his screams got louder and that was just _wrong_.)

Her stomach churned as the _noises _got worse, but she kept her gorge from rising, if only so she wouldn't have to find a bathroom and leave Rossiu to his fate. She didn't want to leave alone when he-

She couldn't finish that thought without trembling more violently than before. She just couldn't.

She closed her eyes, glasses slipping a little from sweat and tried not to cry at the fact that there was nothing that could be done for him, nothing at all, and either he was going to beat this..._this_, or he was going to just die-

Beth's mental track derailed itself. She blinked. Something, some recent but foggy thought was bugging her, like some distant light obscured by a fog she was mired in.

(_She remembered Rossiu's eyes, shut so tightly it had to hurt almost as bad as everything else, and then his eyes opened and, and-_)

She remembered light, like liquified emeralds, so radiently and impossibly _green_, and something that _spun_-

The window in the door flashed and Beth jumped up, and there came a flash of green light, bright and impossible and _good_.

She didn't know why she reacted the way she did, wrenching the door open and running inside; much later on, she would have plenty of time to question what she was thinking at the time enough to decide that she _wasn't _thinking, no more than dogs thought about why they were chasing cars.

The stink was like a slap to the face, like a personal offense. She'd smelled some pretty bad things over her life, and only the smell of things left dead in the sun for weeks compared to _this _nasal atrocity, this awful stench like ten-thousand weeping horrors from the blackest pits of the foulest atrocities ever conceived by humanity, sliding from her nose into her brain with such violence that she weeped uncontrollably in reflex, and it was so hard not to gag or retch.

There were..._things _on the walls, right by Rossiu's bed, lumps of twisted and distorted _meat_ with little spikes and what looked like eyes surronded by _mouths _and little tentacles and they were moving and crawling and weeping and Beth hardly noticed them at all because there was Rossiu right there, still strapped to the bed even though he was straining so hard that he kept lurching the twenty-pound hunk of metal all over the place and hurting himself some more, his body twisted and surging and spasming like he was having a seizure except that seizures didn't have big chunks of your body seize up and grow mouths and start growling until your muscles started swelling in such _awful _ways and then the nasty little lumps just _splattered _into a dozen little chunks that were still moving and hit the walls to start getting _bigger_ and Beth, some iron-hard will settling deep in her, moved to do something, anything-

Moments are quite short spans of time. But there is space between them, and in the space of one moment and the next, things happened.

In that space of time, a dark figure calmly walked over to Rossiu. He had been there the entire time; he was not a being that could be recorded on camera, nor seen by those who were not fit to see him. Dark flowed in his wake; not the darkness of evil, but a soothing darkness, the balmy relief of a shade on a summer day, and the sweeping inevitable end of pain that was the kinder side of death.

It was a darkness born, on some level, of _light_.

Death himself looked down on Rossiu, his blue star-eyes glowing brighter than the light of supernovas. In one hand he held a scythe, and in the other he held an hourglass, the sands in it running furiously; the top bulb was nearly empty, and yet, sand kept running down without it getting any shallower.

Some would say that time had frozen; Rossiu in the grasp of some mighty convulsion, his body a mass of bruises inflicted by his spasms and horrid wounds where his body, nearly breaking itself from the power of the Warp trying to smash it's way through him and into this world, had pieced itself back together from his exertions. The room itself, clouded by gore and sprayed blood and vile bodily humours and the manifold awful afflictions the Warp's struggles had worked on Rossiu. And Beth, frozen in mid-step into the room, her expression a horrified mixture of many roiling emotions. Death looked at her for a long time, like an man working out a wonderfully complex puzzle that he had not even fully begun to figure out and did not expect to find any answers soon.

Death gazed at her moment longer, his usual curiosity regarding sentient beings fading into a stranger sort of thing. It is often said of Death that he didn't feel anything, and this is true; he lacked the neccesary biological components to feel emotions as humans would understand them. However, he _did _know things like satisfaction, and regret, and concern. Looking at Beth, his expressionless face nonetheless conveyed a alien species of pity.

He knew what was coming for them. They did not. In some respects, that was a blessing, but in others, it left them woefully unprepared.

Death turned aside and returned his attention to Rossiu. He didn't look overlong at Rossiu's Warp-spawned injuries, nor at the shape of the mind stilled at the moment; the Warp was forcing it's way into Rossiu, and he was _experiencing _all of it's vast horror. And, perhaps, other things as well. Death had seen things like that before, of much greater magnitude, and when the time came he was the surcease of pain and shepherded them to whatever came next.

He held up the hourglass, peering at it with professional interest. It was a fairly simple hourglass, the bulbs twisted slightly now. On the rim of the lower was a name: _Rossiu Adai_. The sand in the upper bulb was almost gone, and yet, there was something unusual about it.

There were faint green sparks in that bulb, new grains of sand condensing from them. Even though time had supposed stopped.

CURIOUS, Death said, and that was all.

He was aware of what would mostly likely happen here. The Warp might either chew a tunnel through Rossiu and allow the hordes of Khorne through it (and this airship, born of war and fire, was such an appropiate vessel for it), or else Rossiu would deny them that and die in doing so. Like a coin falling; it would land on one side or the other, and the chances of the former were so much higher than the latter, and even though it would be a bitter thing, the latter was still so preferable than the alternative.

And yet the green sparks, flashing in an hourglass that was twisting shape slightly in Death's hand. Coins, after all, sometimes landed on the edge.

Death allowed his temporary dismissal of Time to cease, and the screams immediately started anew.

Beth, though utterly unaware of Death's presence, half-stumbled around him in her rush to Rossiu as the boy screamed in animalistic misery, all pretense of sanity and civilization forgotten in the face of the horrors crackling through his very soul and reshaping his body into an appropiate veseel, rejected and denied at every turn-

The insane daemonic forces of Chaos against a single human will that would kill untold millions for the sake of what was right. Both contained and battling within a single human body. Chaos against that which was, at it's core, Good and Lawful.

It was no wonder that the battle was literally tearing his body apart. And yet, he still lived.

Death watched, waiting patiently for a conclusion, as the girl Beth tried to do _something_, anything, to halt the agonizing horror in front of her. Death found it interesting that even directly exposed to the Warp-energies emanated from Rossiu (though quite subdued and invisible to human eyes at the moment), she was entirely unaffected by it, or even _aware _of it's effects. He wondered, briefly, if it would do any good to explain the situation to her.

YOU DO REALIZE THAT THIS IS NOT TRULY A PHYSICAL TRAUMA? Death said to her, tilting his head. THE POWER OF THE WARP IS ATTEMPTING TO WREST IT'S WAY INTO THIS PORTION OF THE MATERIAL PLANES BY USING HIM AS A CONDUIT.

"KHORNATH!" Rossiu howled, a rare word from his agonized ravings. "Comes! He comes! I smell the blood, I hear the howls, the chains and the blades roar as one, all his own are coming and none can stop his coming..."

"Come on, please stop dying! _Please stop it!_" Beth said, not really listening. (If she had, she might have gone a little crazy; the portents of the Warp are _not _fit for human hearing.) A bit of Rossiu's shoulder swelled up and burst, little wriggling things smacking into the walls and quickly expiring, and now there was a nasty gash in his shoulder. Beth turned pale and looked back at the door and started to move. She hesitated only for a moment...and then she ripped a bit from her pants, enough to make a crude bandage, and tied it around the new gash in Rossiu's arm.

A KINDLY GESTURE, I AM SURE, BUT I DO NOT THINK THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS MUCH IN THIS SITUATION, Death continued. THE POWERS OF THE WARP RACKING HIS BODY ARE THE DIFFICULTY HERE, AND THE BIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE A GREAT DEAL OF DIFFERENCE ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. I DO NOT THINK THAT YOU HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO EXPEL THE CHAOS GODS' INFLUENCE UPON HIM AND YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA THAT I'M TALKING TO YOU, DO YOU?

"Is it weird that I'm starting to get _used _to this?" Beth asked rhetorically as Rossiu's front twitched violently. "I mean, it's already so bad that I'm kind of adjusted to what's going on? It's gross, no doubt about it, but-" Rossiu's chest abruptly swelled up in a hideous mass of cancerous bubbles the color of a bruise that was itself burned and then all of that exploded right off him in a nasty mess that splattered onto the ceiling and then fell off and landed all over Beth and Rossiu. "Oh, _fook, _that's just nasty!" Beth shrieked.

"We fall," Rossiu whispered. "We fall, we all fall, we all go into the dark..."

AH, THAT'S WHAT I EXPECTED, Death said of Beth, sounding only a little disappointed that no one was listening to him. Again. (He was used to it, though.) AND INCIDENTALLY, IT'S NOT _THAT _BAD, he added, referring to what Rossiu had just said. IT SOUNDS OVERMUCH LIKE THE COMPLAINTS OF SEXUALLY IMMATURE CHILDREN THAT SEE FAR TOO MUCH ROMANCE IN NIHILISM AND OTHER UNSAVORY PRINCIPLES, TOO. IS THIS REALLY WHAT CHAOS HAS SUNKEN TO? IMPLANTING OMINOUS BUT POORLY THOUGHT-OUT DECLARATIONS OF DESPAIR IN THE MINDS OF THOSE IT TOUCHES?

"Hey, I think poetry like that sounds cool, and so does my mom," Beth said automatically.

HRM? Death said, wondering how you pronounced a noise like that anyway. He thought you need a vowel or cosonant _somewhere_.

Beth paused and looked around, her eyes sliding over Death without registering his existence. "Um. Is someone there?"

YES, said Death.

"Anyone at all?" Beth said again. Rossiu screamed loudly, his head pounding against the metal table several times in his convulsions. More bits of him swelled up and burst. "Besides you, I mean."

_YES, _Death said, more loudly this time.

Beth looked around frantically, still seeing nothing. "...This is getting weird!" she complained. More Rossiu-flesh burst and hit her in the face. "And I just realized that I said that _after _the guy I kinda-sorta have a crush on was attacked by a demon and is melting on the inside, pulling himself back together and dying in some other horrible way before piecing himself _again_ until he inevitably succumbs. When was stuff like this _normal?_"

I AM NOT SURE I CAN HONESTLY TELL YOU, Death said dutifully. THOUGH I EXPECT YOU CAN TRACE IT RIGHT AROUND TO THE POINT WHERE YOU WILLINGLY ENGAGED YOURSELF IN THAT UNPLEASANT TELEVISION PROGRAM.

"Why do I get the feeling that someone's giving me really broad and unsolicited advice right now that would probably make me feel like an idiot?" Beth said.

KEEN OBSERVATION OF THE PLAINLY OBVIOUS? Death suggested.

"Oh well, it's probably nothing at all," Beth said, concentrating on patching Rossiu up.

Still twitching in the straps, Rossiu gasped. "I can see Death behind you," he whispered. "Resplendent in his darkness and glorious in his compassion...he is far less ominous than I expected..."

THANK YOU, said Death.

"Absolutely _nothing _at all," Beth said. Death tapped a finger on his scythe with some measure of discontent. "Oh, I bet this is _my _fault somehow! Something unspeakably awful happens to all the guys I like! Oh no...it's the _curse!_ The curse from Boney Island! _Demons smelled my curse and they came for you, Rossiu!_" she whimpered and closed her eyes so tight so she wouldn't cry. "Rossiu...I'm sorry..."

NO, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU, HE SIMPLY HAD THE RIGHT STATE OF MIND AND RECEPTIVITY TO THE FORCES OF THE WARP, Death said. AND EXTRAORDINARILY BAD TIMING.

Beth paused. "What timing?" She looked around wildly. "_WHO KEEPS SAYING THESE THINGS!_"

OH, I DON'T KNOW WHY I BOTHER, Death said, a little testily.

Something in the air flickered. Rossiu stood completely and utterly still, his eyes wide. He twitched once, twice, and a third time, his jaw working around words that didn't come and gasping in short and desperate bursts.

The bandages that had been wrapped around his shoulder (and something like _mold _growing over them) burst apart and Beth stared at them in surprise; the gaping wounds on her shoulder looked open nearly to the bone, all the muscle and flesh burned away...and _burned _was the right word, for the awful wounds glowed with a malefic fire like the very flames of Hell itself, a bizarre non-color that hurt to look at and veins of it creeping into Rossiu's flesh, cracking his skin and spreading out and little lumps appearing on his skins before cracking open into what looked like _eyes_-

AH, Death said dismissively of the works of Chaos. _DRAMA_.

"Oh my God," Beth said, low and still, her eyes wide and her body completely unmoving at the sight of this thing that should not be. She didn't move, though it was unclear if she was afraid to run...or unwilling to do so.

Rossiu absolutely _howled_ and his body went into a seizure again, pulling and straining and slamming against the straps like his body was being pulled in a dozen different directions at the same time and he kept screaming and screaming, "_A thousand insect-things beyond human conception, swarming and feeding and EATING AND EATING, they come for us body and MIND AND SOUL, they're fattened with the meat of an entire galaxy and THEY'RE STILL SO HUNGRY-_"

Death looked at Rossiu's hourglass. It was wholly unneccesary in the circumstances to see his life falling away...falling...falling.

"No!" Beth said. "No no no!" She blinked away tears, her face frozen in a expression of absolute helpless horror.

"_The dead walk,_" Rossiu gasped, his arm twisted and a awful _face _appearing in the rapidly mutating flesh. _"The star-eating gods of old took them from their bones and put them into metal shells that know no pain, know no fear and they KNOW NOTHING. All life they will destroy and they cannot die. They will not die. They are dead, and yet they live. The metal lives. The Metal Lives. THE METAL LIVES._"

Beth shrieked again as the face on Rossiu's arm _snarled_, pushing and pulling and growing larger. She stared at his arm, the color draining from her face along with her hope of making this _better_...and then she stared at his arm, or rather, the part were the corrupted flesh joined the smooth slide of muscle from his neck. Past that point, his damaged body was still free of the daemonic corruption of his arm. Her lips narrowed into a thin line and she grabbed something off the floor, something shining and strong and _sharp_.

"So many horrors," Rossiu sobbed. "So many evils, so many awful _things_ and-" he stopped, his eyes seeming to look at some distant thing. "I see ancient ones. So old, so powerful...and almost dead. A foul god-thing of desire and lust and it's _eating them_, but they will not die. And there is...there is...a warrior-princess? A battle-queen? I don't know...don't know...her eyes are strange and the boy-" He froze. "The boy. There is a boy with her. His eyes...his _eye_." His breath stopped for a moment, and then he said in a hushed voice. "_A spiral._"

Beth held up a saw, her eyes closed in grim determination, and she advanced on him again.

Rossiu kept babbling as his arm surged, and the hellfire in his arm guttered as sparks of green light appeared from his very flesh. "I see...stars. A machine-titan larger than worlds, with so many faces, made of green light, like a god enfleshed." Rossiu shuddered as the green light flashed brighter still. "I see...I see-"

Beth had already tuned out his ravings. She bit her lip, the saw raised over his arm. For a moment, she heisitated. "...I'm sorry, Rossiu..." She whispered, and brought it down.

Rossiu's eyes widened, and for a single awful moment, he was looking right on Beth with perfect clarity.

The saw didn't make it the whole way. Rossiu's eyes _flashed,_ and green light flooded from him, spinning around him and encrciling him at once, so bright that Beth stumbled back and dropped the saw. Rossiu roared again, like a defiant beast, the hellfire in his arm guttering out and the daemon eyes in him dying in bursts of green and Beth felt _something _wash over her, something wild and chaotic (but not in a bad way) and completely crazy, almost like the horrors she had seen before now except this was _good_ like nothing she'd felt before and some awful _presence _tearing away from Rossiu and slamming down into the floor and down, down-

And then everything went green.

Death watched the hourglass. It too flashed green, just once, and that was it.

When the light faded, Beth stumbled back and made a small noise of utter delight; the gore and blood and other icky stuff was there but Rossiu was _not _hurt anymore; his arm had been restored, the muscle on it a bit diminished then before but unharmed, most of him was bruised and an unheathy pallor but otherwise unharmed. There was no awful mutation, no blinking eyes, no hellfire, nothing monstrous or scary anymore. He was alive; unharmed, unhurt and miraculously alive. And in place of the wounds on his shoulder were markings that looked like the curces of a spiral.

And nothing creepy was moving in the room and Beth found herself wondering if she had been having a vivid and awful nightmare. She could almost believe it, aside from the blood and fluids all over the walls.

Rossiu took a shuddering breath. With some interest, Death observed that the hourglass had changed, both bulbs resembling _drills _for some reason, and the upper bulb was full of sand now. WELL, THAT WAS ENLIGHTENING, he said, watching Beth sob and rush Rossiu in a mighty hug.

"Eh?" Rossiu grunted dazedly. "...Miss Beth? What happened...?"

"Are you okay?" Beth whispered. "Do you feel hurt?"

"No..." Rossiu whispered, slipping away from her. "I feel...huh. I feel..._better_...different. Did...something happen to me? I remember such..." He froze. "What is...what did...what _happened to me_?"

"Nothing," Beth said smoothly, settling him back. "You had a nightmare. That's all. Just a nightmare."

"...Oh," Rossiu said faintly. "Okay. That's okay...I can live with that. I'm alive." He chuckled. "Feel like _lots _of things are alive that their brothers think aren't alive."

"Rossiu?" Beth asked, concerned.

"I'mma sleep now, 'kay?" Rossiu muttered, his eyes closing. Moments later, his breathing was even and measured, and he was soundly asleep.

"Yeah," Beth said tiredly. "Okay. You do that. I can work with that." She paused, a doubtful look crossing her face. She screwed up her face in determination and dared to lean over and lightly kiss Rossiu on the forehead. He shifted a little in his sleep, his usual neutral expression shifting into a faint smile. Beth smiled back, a certain look on her face implying that she would be falling asleep soon herself.

EDGE IT IS THEN, Death said to himself, satisfied with these proceedings. I DO NOT REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT COINS HAVE TO DO WITH THESE MATTERS, BUT IT'S NOT IMPORTANT, I IMAGINE. He shifted, ribbons of gentle darkness sliding around his cloak. THE TAINT REMAINS, IF NOT IN HIM, BUT IN THE AIRSHIP ITSELF. I SUPPOSE THERE IS MUCH FERTILE GROUND HERE FOR IT TO OPEN IT'S OWN WAY IN TIME. Death didn't look happy about this. He tapped a bony finger against his chin in poor mimickry of seeing someone do it once. I BELIEVE THAT WE MAY HAVE TO OFFER ANOTHER OMEN IN A MORE..DIRECT FASHION.

Death paused again. Significantly so. WHY DO PEOPLE PAUSE WHEN THEY MAKE DRAMATIC STATEMENTS LIKE THAT? IT SEEMS MORE EFFICIENT TO SAY WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY ALL AT ONCE. LESS AIR IS WASTED THAT WAY. He thought about it somemore, came to no reasonable conclusions, and gave the transmogrified hourglass another look. He almost seemed to smile, and glided off.

In the hours to come, Geoff and Bridgette would come up to see how Rossiu was doing. They would firstly want to know where all the blood and other icky stuff had come from and why it was coating the walls like it was. Then they would want to know why Rossiu kept staring into space like he had soon some partly awful and partly wondrous revelation and it was consuming his attention. (Moreso than usual.) And _then _they'd want to know how Rossiu's injury had healed so quickly, and, finally, they _both _really wanted to know (in rather lewd and knowing looks, of course) why Beth had stayed watch over Rossiu.

The farm girl and the new intern were able to make up some pretty decent answers for most of these things, and in Rossiu's case they weren't really lies since he didn't know much of the truth himself. (There was an amusing incident involving a basketful of bloodbags and the interns did a live animal sacrifice that summoned forth dread gods that threw them out of the airship; Rossiu went into a coma and beheld the secrets of the multiverse; the daemon attack wound up being a mere flesh wound and you'd be _really _surprised by the power of positive thinking. And...ah, yes, neither of them could come up with any plausible excuses for why Beth had taken such an interest in Rossiu. Geoff thought that was hilarious, at which point Rossiu brought up all the times he had totally struck out with Bridgette before they hooked up, at which point much amusement was had. Except from Geoff, he was amazingly embarrased.)

There was also the problem of the hole that had been burned right into the floor below Rossiu's bed and apparently going into the depths of the airship. Beth refused to speak of it, and they eventually decided to nail some boards over it and leave it be.

It wasn't like there was anything that might come up from the bottom of the airship or something.

...

By coincidence or design, the very next morning after Rossiu's recovery, Da Boss of Da Boyz, the mighty Kah-Mee-Nah, declared that they'd done enough screwing around and it was time to get the awesome goin' on, and in the interests of doing just that, Da Boyz had gotten to work building a means of getting Kah-Mee-Nah and a small party up to the Total Drama Airship.

The result was what you got whenever you had Orks make _anything_; it would do the job, probably, but it was still a little...sketchy.

Da Boyz had made camp on an isolated cliff after their battle and had worked through the night, their space hulk of a ship hovering a short distance away with a gigantic neon sign that said WE ARE DEFINITELY NOT ALIENS on it. (No one had shown up to contest this.) And, upon a spot that had been agreed upon by the Mek Boyz (ork mechanics) and the Weird Boyz (orks with abnormal levels of psychic capability) after some appropiately physical arguing, a large machine had been made, a feat of engineering along with some psychically assisted bending of the laws of physics and a lot of incredibly good luck. It's parts had been harvested from industrial equipment, tanks, abandoned cars and other fruits of looting as well as whatever the Orks deemed to be public property. (Anything that wasn't nailed down or on fire, in other words.) Massive treads and cylinder-presses formed a assembly line to it's base, a huge tower constructed from assembled electromagnets to make a crude railgun shooting the payload into a Y-shaped...thing at the very top, contained by a number of surprisingly sophisticated machines all designed to sustain the velocity, focus and amplify it even more, shooting the target at an incredible speed while keeping it safe in a shell of Orkoid psychic energies. (It also looked a lot like a giant slingshot.)

Kah-Mee-Nah approved of what they'd managed to build in such a short time. It was a common misconception, he reflected, that Orks were stupid. They were not, though he freely admitted that he was a bit biased here, as he quite happily held the dubious honor of being 'da most Orky humie ever to walk da worlds and stomp anyfing dat look fighty', as urban legend put it. Orks were _focused_, and generally considered putting too much thought into relatively simply problems to be dithering around the whole thing and make everything worse, and they were posessed of a cultural mindframe that gave humans, Tau, Eldar and various others reason to think the Orks primitive or barbaric, but 'stupid' wasn't the best word for Orks.

Lots of people had thought _him _stupid. Mean-spirited, sadistic and ruthless they had been in varying degrees. And he'd left hundreds of battlefields littered with their bodies. It wasn't something he thought about very much (like most Orks, Kah-Mee-Nah didn't have much concern with killing enemies; Orks just liked fighting, and since very few beings were as tough as they were, it was a generally acceptable consequence), but it did make him wonder if he was eventually going to run out of bad guys to stomp because he already got them all.

It was an interesting idea, for the brief time he had it, and just as quickly dismissed. If he _did _take out everybody that made things worse, he reasoned, he wouldn't be any better than they were. _Good guys _didn't go out to waste everyone they thought was a problem, or so he'd been taught. They looked for problems, they helped people on the way, and they stopped those problems. Slaying was an acceptable means of doing so, within certain justifiable limits. And anyway, there would invaribly be more bad guys to fight. That was unfortunate.

After Nikigok's most recent report, he'd decided that the time to act was now; he was deeply unhappy with recent events aboard that airship; turning the contestant's prison into a more literal deathtrap, stocking the place with horrible threats and making every day a literal fight for their lives was something he _really _didn't like.

(_Simon would have just HATED that_, he thought briefly. A rare expression of grief flashed for a moment. The Orks did not dwell overmuch on the dead, but in that regard, he was unlike his chosen people.)

But, on the other hand, it made him think. "Hey," He said to the nearest Ork milling around and setting things up. As luck would have it, it was Bitz, who he'd taken a bit of a shine to; in fact, he'd recently given him the name 'Jammy Bitz' in deference to obscure Ork slang and his incredible luck in still being alive dispite his constant tendency towards injury. "I gots some thinkin' ta hammer out."

Bitz waved a Mek over to take over calibrating the target computer (which, in typical Ork fashion, was an eclectic combination of clacky-balls, some silicon chips slapped together, a number of actual computers taped together and a hot cup of tea, all of it somehow creating what a moderately skilled techician would be astonished to recognize as a functioning Infinite Improbility Engine of limited capacity) and lumbered over to Kah-Mee-Nah. "What'z it, boss?"

Kah-Mee-Nah pointed dramatically at the horizon. "Those kids we're gonna see! They're out dere somewheres, right?"

Bitz nodded. "Sure! We tracked 'em down nice and good! Almost ready to send yaz off ta say 'hey'."

Kah-Mee-Nah nodded, glancing at the machine the Orks had made to do just that. "Not just me. You too, and the others that I gets packed into the shooty-us-thing. Also, Boota." Kah-Me-Nah's insistence on that had led to a particularily obsessive Mek Boy constructing a 'Make-It-Smaller-For-A-Bit-Zapstik' that had reduced Boota to the size of a large housecat. (He was now sleeping atop Kah-Mee-Nah's head.) They didn't know how long it would last, nor did they care; most of the ones that noticed thought it would be a fair laugh sticking around and watching Boota swell back up when no one was expecting it.

"Yeah, dat too." Bitz looked faintly puzzled. "Why's ya asking dat?"

"I wuz just thinkin'." He said so distantly, like he had been thinking a little _too _much.

"Yaz gonna do yuh-self no good just sittin' around like a zogger. Get out dere and do stuff, dat's da ticket." This was Ork philosophy at it's finest and simplest.

Kah-Mee-Nah rolled his eye. "Dis is an important bit, Bitz. Yaz been watchin' how _dis _season is different from da other ones, yeah?"

Bitz tilted his head; there was a considerably number of clanking noises. "Dey's a lot tougher on da humies dis time 'round," He said eventually. "I can see dat much."

"Yep," Kah-Mee-Nah said, satisfied. "Dey make 'em do all kinds of crazy stuff before, but dis time? Like they's trying ta _kill _'em! Dat don't seem like dey's s'posed ta do that. Dis Chris jerk what runs the game, somefink ain't going right with his head."

Bitz peered at him. "...Yaz thinks the Chaos 'as got to him."

"I t'ink _something _is talking him without bovverin' with his ears," Kah-Mee-Nah said seriously. "Thing 'bout dis world I's noticed. Dey _know _when somefing spooky's gone wrong, mebbe recognize it, but dey's too stubborn or slow to see it when it's a for-sure thing. And if dey do, people call 'em crazy and don't give 'em an ear to talk to, see?"

"Humies is stupid," Bitz remarked, his massive shoulders shrugging as if in astonishment at the foolishness of humanity.

"Naw," Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Just inexperienced. Don't know no better." Bitz grunted disapprovingly but didn't push the issue. You didn't get to be Da Boss without being the roughest, the toughest, the greenest and the meanest. Kah-Mee-Nah appeared to think the whole thing over and shrugged, grinning like a fool. "One thing after anuvver; first we says hi, then we works stuff out!"

"I likes that plan," Bitz said after chortling a big Orkish laugh. "Simple, easy ta remember."

After that, he wandered off, getting the last few bits of business settling: making sure their 'gifts' were properly packed up, finding the Orks that had volunteered to come along (Bitz and Gritsgrotz among them), getting their vehicles set up on the loading spot and a coupling set up to make sure the vehicles didn't fly apart in mid-air, instructing Da Boyz on what to do until he gave them the go-ahead and meet up with him and the other minutia that was called for.

It didn't take that long, though; Orks weren't much for organization, outside of the Storm Boyz faction of Orks who thought that human things like tactical methods and proper warfare experience were worth knowing, and even they would have been considered annyoingly laid-back and unprofessional by most other military sorts. (They made a large part of Kah-Mee-Nah's Orks.) In less then fifteen minutes, he'd already finished up by giving instructions to a very unusual Nob from the Goff tribe. "...And after you've mopped up those other zoggers we have our eyes on, I'll give the signal and you come and find us, yeah? Hopefully, da kidz'll will go for it!"

"And if they don't like it?" The Ork he was addressing said, looking faintly troubled.

Kah-Mee-Nah snorted and clonked him on the upper arm. (Since that was as high as he could reach.) "What are yaz doing, throwing around squig-headed doubts like dat! Don't believe in a lousy future! The future ain't somethin' that happens just because, it's _BUILT _on our dreams, our choices, our decisions and our _BELIEFS!_ If you _believe _in a future where everything's wahoonie-shaped, that's what yaz gonna get! And if you believe inna a future where everything goes right, a future where Orks everywhere see Da Right and Proppa, where da Chaos is da way it used to be in the before-our-times, and da humies and da elfies and da Tau ain't always tryin' to kill each other just because...if you believe in a future like that, and yaz scrape yazself to da bone and tooth ta make it real and pull it headlong from all the da maybes of tomorrow? _THAT'S WHAT YOU'LL GET!_" Kah-Mee-Nah grinned like a maniac. "Ya gets it?"

The Ork, whose name was Thrall, peered down at Kah-Mee-Nah and nodded. Just once, a quick but heavy motion like the falling of an avalanche. He was a good deal unlike the standard Ork, having picked up humie linguistics fairly well, he deeply frowned upon 'doing stupid things because someone yelled a Waaagh', and, all things considered, if Kah-Mee-Nah hadn't come along he probably would have become a prophet of Gork and Mork above even the famed Warboss Ghazghkull Thraka. When Kah-Mee-Nah had first met Thrall's warband, he'd been unusually receptive to Kah-Mee-Nah's ideas, won over by words instead of the usual beatdown (Orks normally put little stock in words, reasoning that the greenest Ork was the one who could prove how good they were in proper battle); Kah-Mee-Nah usually had him in-charge when he had to do other stuff (in an ordinary crew, it would been the second-in-command, but Kah-Mee-Nah's second-in-command, a beastman named Viral, was off on another mission); Da Boss reasoned that Thrall was a pretty cool guy who wouldn't go out and kill stuff out of boredom.

A Mek Boy waited until they were done talking to bang some large wrenches together to get Kah-Mee-Nah's attention. (He could have just cleared his throat, but that wouldn't have been _Orky_.) "We'z ready to get this goin', Big Bro!"

Kah-Mee-Nah grinned, positively gleeful at the prospect. "Aw right! Get Da Boyz together, I'mma shoving off!"

Very shortly afterward, the Orks were gathered in front of Kah-Mee-Nah and the five others that had chosen to accompany him, armed to hunt daemons if need be and dressed to impress: Bitz, his mechanical parts freshly replaced and in good order, wearing a denim jumpsuit colored in the yellows of his tribe the Evil Sunz, and slung in an array of pockets and holsters was a collection of oversized shootas, blastas and even a Zappa-Gunn.

Then there was Grotsgritz, wearing a 'Ard Boy's suit of powered armor with lots of spikes, electrical prongs and other bits everywhere, a frightening collection of choppas and chainsaw-knives built into it, and his favorite blasta was slung on his back, though the fearful image was a bit spoiled by the drinking-hat hammered under the helmet. (And then the powered armor looked oddly like a football player's uniform.) On Gritzgrotz's shoulder was an unusually large Gretchin named Lakkabork, self-proclaimed 'Craziest Grot Alive' and maybe the fact that he'd wired a jet into his spine had something for it. He was a talented Mek Boy with a number of cybernetic parts he'd done himself and he wore the colors of the ferocious Goff tribe; his armored vest (Kah-Mee-Nah's flaming skull insignia on the back), metal-on-fabric overalls and various tattoos painted in checkered black-and-red.

Looming over them both was Chopstop; he was bigger than a Nob and his entire body replaced with bionics, remade into a (relatively) small-scale Killer Kan of an Ork that was all blue-painted sharp metal plates, a Power Klaw for one massively oversized arm and an array of guns on the other just around a surprisingly delicate and precise set of splindly finger-bits. Da Boyz claimed that Chopstop was a Painboy who loved surgery almost as much as he admired Dreadnaughts, so he made _himself _into a killing machine, tough enough to take any hit the smaller Boyz couldn't and strong enough to spook a Squiggoth. But he still did his fair share of surgery too; he was their number-one Painboy (a rather accurate term for an ork doctor). He rested back on bent-back legs like a Dreadnaught's, steam hissing from vents, grim red eye-lenses peering down at them all.

Finally, there was a young Ork named Brikspok, sprouted only a few months ago and smaller than average but earning a reputation for himself. He was wearing several layers of ragged longcoats sewn out of murals he'd made himself, odd images dedicated to Kah-Mee-Nah and the gods shimmering with every move, as well as a set of overalls made from Tyranid-skin and decorated with dozens of little trinkets he had fancied and stitched right into his trousers. His entire body was a prayer to Gork and Mork; sixteen screws and bearings and small gears from a fallen Dreadnaught piercing his pointed ears, elaborate spiral-shaped blue tattoos that were _moving _across his body, drifting on green flesh like clouds in the sky, and then there were his eyes. Not red, but shining green, randomized colors twisting across them. A bizarre haze flickered around him, an otherworldly aura spiraling in his wake and leaving small miracles in his passing, the power of da Orks infused into his very being, soaked up like water to a sponge and spewed back out with abandon. His very body crackled with power; not merely the power of the Waagh, but also the mysterious power of the Spiral that Da Boss offered, helping to tame the often-fatal powers of the Waagh and allowing him to communce with other Orks instead of being ostracised for their own safety, for this Ork was an Ork with a greater-than-normal affinity towards the Ork's sub-conscious psychic powers, or as they put it, 'onna da Weird Boyz'. In his hand was a crude staff: a copper-lined lamppost torn from the ground and festooned with all manner of decorative trinkets, topped by a huge war banner bearing the mark of Da Boss; the Orky skull burning with fury, one eye-hole squinting madly and a pair of stylish sunglasses atop them.

Behind them was the stuff they were bringing; essential supplies for their mission, some loot they felt would be appreciated and some other things, loaded into their vehicles that they were bringing; the Dakkacycle flipped upside-down with a slightly smaller war bike belonging to Lakkabork coupled to one side, a war trukk Bitz had appropiated at the other side and to the rear was a enormous war trukk even bigger than the Dakakcycle (though not as awesome); a heavy customized war trukk Gritzgrotz was improving all the time at the bottom and clamped to the rest, carrying all the other stuff they were bringing with them in the large storage tray at the rear as well. Except for the Dakkacycle, huge drills had been affixed to the vehicle's fronts for a purpose none of them were strictly aware of but too excited to ask. No one asked why the Dakkacycle hadn't been prepped like the others, because Kah-Mee-Nah didn't need to _have _drills put on anything beforehand.

"Someone record dis!" Kah-Mee-Nah shouted gleefully, a man that was a lot more sentimental than most expected: some Orks messed around with a monstrous machine, and it clambered to life, Orks getting out of the way as a spindley-legged contraption scuttled into view, a massive lens appearing in site as other, stranger devices retracted. Levers and switches had been thrown and it settled into view, the Ork's expectations of what was wanted enough of a command and power source to make it do as desired. It settled into place, lens focused on them, and the Orks gathered around Kah-Mee-Nah and his chosen few; even the Squiggs and Squiggoths, still kept out for a bit of fresh air, gathered around; unlike other warbands, they _were _part of Da Boyz and every one of them knew it.

Da Boyz flexed and posed, trying to look cool. Others shot guns and burners wildly into the air, mostly the ones on the fringe because they _knew _that looked cool. The bigger Nobs and Skarboyz at the back posed in such a way that they framed everyone else with their sheer bigness. Most of the Gretchin, all of the assembled Squiggoths and quite a few Orks broke into unashamed weeping and sobbing and theatrical displays of sorrow; their big brother, Da Boss, the mighty Kah-Mee-Nah, was leaving for a little while. The inspiration that moved them onto Da Right and Proppa, the only humie (or Ork) as Orky as da Godz, da only one who laughed to cheer them up, fight when they were bored and never had a bad thing to say about _anyone_. He made them feel..._good _in a way they couldn't phrase but felt down to their algae-melded DNA; their sadness was ameliorated only by the knowing that he would bust right through the gates of Death to at least say 'Go kick some arse!' or something inspirational, and he definitely wasn't going to come back without something exciting for them all. Thrall looked dignified and badass, Kah-Mee-Nah even more badass with his chainsword slung over his back but too manic to be dignified. Lakkabork made some victory signs with his hands while Gritzgrotz and Bitz punched each other's fists in a gesture of fierce brotherhood. Chopstop looked vaugely stoned (but still pretty badass) and Brikspok started up a exciting victory tune he made up on the spot and called up the spirits of the earth beneath them and the oceans beyond to join in. (It was a pretty rockin' song, all considered.)

As the machine, not exactly a camera but similar enough to a video recorder though vastly more sophisticated, recorded their antics in three-dimensional splendor, several of the Orks picked up on Brikspok's new song. No two Orks sang the same lyrics, but getting it right wasn't important, it was the passion in their words, the energy in their voices that mattered. The singing spread, dozens of other Orks singing in what was more or less tune, until Kah-Mee-Nah thought the song was zoggin' _metal _and roared along with all the hot-blooded passion and mad joy only he could muster for so small a matter. The waves spontaneously smashed against the cliffside for an appropiately dramatic backdrop, and as if on cue, every single Ork joined in the singing, from the tiniest Gretchin to the biggest Nob, a thousand-fold chorous of rough but earnest voices roaring together, even the Squiggoth's massive voices providing a wordless baritone. A mighty symphony rang out, the sounds of musical instruments singing out of thin air thanks to Brikspok, and had there been anyone else to witness it's awesomeness, they would have beheld a full warband of Orks, banded together under the leadership of a single human, singing together in cheerful chorus just for the hell of it, a kind of chaos totally different from the screaming nightmares of the universe they'd left behind; something good and wild and all-encompassing, a wild force that would be as likely to give you a light smack in the noggin as it would to give you a hug, but you'd feel happy either way because it was just plain awesome like that.

Without warning, Kah-Mee-Nah hit a particularily passionate high-note and added, "BOYZ! YOU LISTEN TA ME HERE AND NOW; BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAW THAT THERE AIN'T NUFFIN WE CAN'T DO IF WE BELIEVE WE CAN!"

"YEAH!" Da Boyz roared.

"HELL YEAH! I KNOW WE CAN! YOU'RE ALL MY SOUL-BROTHERS! FROM DA LITTLEST GRETCHIN TO DA MIGHITEST SQUIGGOTH, I'D BUST UP DA GODZ OF CHAOS IF THEY SO MUCH AS LOOK FUNNY AT YAZ, AND YOU'D DO DA SAME FER ME! IF DA EMPEROR DECIDED YAZ AIN'T GOOD ENUFF TO LIVE, I'D SMACK HIM UP 'TILL HE SAW DA RIGHT AND PROPPA! AND ANYFING ELSE OUT DERE RAN AND HID WHEN DEY HEARD I GOT UP TODAY, 'CAUSE DEY KNEW _YOU ALL _WAS GETTING UP TOO!"

"YEEEAH!" Da Boyz cheered.

"WE'Z GONNA SMASH THROUGH THE INFINITE TOMORROW AND SHATTER DESTINY TO PIECES AND SHOVE 'EM BACK TOGETHER TO CREATE THE FUTURE WE CHOOSE FOR OURSELVES!" Kah-Mee-Nah yelled, and with his next words he refuted all the powers of the dark Gods of Chaos: "I DON'T NEED TO HOPE! I DON'T WANNA ACCEPT WHAT IS! I GOTS MORE THEN COURAGE! AND THERE'S MORE TO WHAT I'M SAYING THAN JUST DESIRE! WHAT I HAVE IS BELIEF! I BELIEVE IN YOU BOYS!"

There was a mighty roar, the precursor of a great 'Waagh' cry.

Kah-Mee-Nah went on. "YOU BELIEVE IN ME! SO I CAN DO ANYTHING WITH YOU BOYZ AT MY BACK! I CAN SMASH THROUGH MOUNTAINS, TEAR THROUGH DREADIES AND OUTRACE DEATH ITSELF! ALL 'CAUSE OF YOU! I BELIEVE IN YOU JUST AS YAZ BELIEVES IN ME! BELIEVE IN THE ME, BOYZ, DAT BELIEVES IN _YOU!_"

(All that he could do, was because of them. For that, he owed them all.)

There was a massive scream, wild and joyful and primal, and there was something else there, something alien to the average Ork. A quality missing in those who were normally so cheerfully myopic of the not-now; a vision of a future that had been told to them in broad strokes, so little that was specific but unfolding in each Orkish mind to tell a story grand and glorious, something of fights that would make a _difference_, their ancient destinies fulfilled at long last by their ancient makers, their almost unnoticed envy of their fundamental inability to truly _live _as Da Boss did wiped away as they transformed their own natures into something better and brighter...

Something beyond mere survival. Something above bragging rights or expectation of the next fight. An opportunity to _make a difference_. To be _heroes_.

From any other, they would dismiss it as humie nonsense. From Da Boss, their big brother, the mighty _Kah-Mee-Nah_...it was as though hearing from the gods themselves. Many believed it was the same thing. And as he said, he believed in them, and so they believed in him, and thus themselves.

They had not the words to describe how they felt, even if they stopped to think about them. All the same, it was a beautiful thing.

"Aw right!" Kah-Mee-Nah said, pushing his sunglasses back into place with a finger. "Me and these Mad Boyz here are gonna shove off for a bit! NO WORRIES! _THE NEXT TIME YAZ SEES US, WE'LL HAVE NEW BUDDIES TO ROCK OUT WITH! TA SHOW DA RIGHT AND PROPPA!_" He dove behind the Orks behind him and went straight for the machines, clambering over the vehicles loaded there and climbing into the seat of the Dakkacycle, strapping himself in so he could sit while upside-down. (No one asked how his sunglasses stayed on. Perhaps gravity feared to remove them from his brow.) "BOYZ! MOVE OUT!"

The rest of his chosen got into their respective vehicles; Lakkibork into his war bike, Bitz into his war trukk and Gritzgrotz into his own war trukk with Brikspok riding shotgun while Chopstop hunkered between the Dakkacycle and the war trukks. Kah-Mee-Nah also wound a bunch of straps around the back of his head to make a crude but secure harness that Boota slipped into.

The Orks scattered as machinery whirred to life, the recorder still doing it's work. And soon, "WE GOTZ IT AIMED!" A Mek Boy yelled, entering a few commands into a control panel, and the mechanism turned very slightly to the left. Some of the Orks fancied that they could see a distant shape, far out to sea, where their brother Nikigok had gone.

"THEN START HER UP!" Kah-Mee-Nah yelled.

The conveyer belt (or rather the three of them hooked up together; they had to be big enough to support the massive vehicles) started up. It moved quite fast for the load it was moving, but still too slowly for Orkoid tastes. "Why's it so zoggin' slow?" Chopstop complained.

Lakkibork snickered. "Jus' yaz wait."

Chopstop looked at him, his articulated metal face creaking in interesting ways as it tried to frown. "Wuzzat s'posed ta mean-"

There was a revving noise, and the conveyer belt abruptly propelled the quite surprised Orks directly into the machine, their clamped vehicles landing heavily against the wall and leaving everyone a bit dizzy. "Whee?" Bitz said dazedly.

"Zog-head!" Lakkibork taunted him. Bitz gave him a smack. "Whee?" He said, now dazed.

"Maybe we shoulda put somethin' to make the dizzy stop happening," Kah-Mee-Nah said vaugely. The platform they were now upon began to spin, grinding fast up the long chamber above them, electromagnets spinning. "Yep, definitely gotta do something about that."

"Oh," Lakkabork said suddenly. "Check out da speed boost!"

The platform was rising faster and faster. "Speed boost?" Chopstop repeated. "What speed boo-"

They hit the first series of electromagnets and accelerated so violently that there were all thrown back on their seats (if Chopstop hadn't been secured in place, he might have smashed right through Gritzgrotz's windshield), centrifugal force hammering into them with such force that they could only manage a slight 'whee!'. And then they hit the second electromagnets. And the third set. And the fourth. And the _fifth_, accelerating at speeds well in excess of insanely fast with each one: lights lit up on the outside of the machine as Kah-Mee-Nah passed each successful series of electromagnets. One Ork, taking notice of the increasingly faint but still quite loud noises, turned to another and asked, "Should dey be screamin' like dat?"

"It ain't proper speed if no one's screamin'," the other Ork said firmly.

All of that happened in less than ten seconds: there was the mighty sound of a sonic boom shooting up, contained and withstood by the telekinetic barrier at the top (sonic booms didn't work that way, but the Orks thought that they should, and so they did) before they shot right up through the top, nearly punching through the glowing green band of telekentic energy maintained by a number of increasingly stressed Weird Boyz; they stopped a few inches from piercing it, floating in place and slowly spinning while the green band, moving around them in incredibly violent currents as it struggled with their acculmated kinetic energy, spun around and around, glowing brighter as Da Boss pumped more power into it, doubling it in size.

"Shouldn't da sonic boom 'ave made us all deaf and stuff?" Chopstop said dubiously.

"Shh!" Brikspok said urgently. "Reality _'ates _it when ya points out da inconsistencies!"

"GAH! MY EARS!" Lakkibrok screamed.

"Whoops."

"See?" Brikspok said smugly.

"Hold on, yaz gonna take off now!" Thrall shouted up as the final phase of the launching begun.

It is important to remark, as this band of energy collected into a ball that moved back and stretched between the prongs, that for all of the scale of the lanching platform, that the machine looked like an oversized slingshot. Given how the band of energy was pulled back, the resemblence was almost painfully obvious.

The huge structure rotated slightly, Kah-Mee-Nah and his boys aimed a little higher. Bitz' monocular focused on a distant dot, zooming in on something so far away that none of them could have even gotten this tiny glimpse without technological aid, and excitedly yelled, "I sees it, I _sees it!_"

"No yaz don't," Gritzgrotz said, just to be contrary. Bitz kicked him in the head. "Gah, the pain! It hardly hurts at all. WUSS."

The energy band twisted up like a screw as they suddenly started spinning around, the kinetic energy pulling the band tighter and tighter, almost to the breaking point.

Kah-Mee-Nah yelled, "FIRE!" and shouted something else as a Mek Boy hit the appropiate button. Boota squeaked in dread.

The band snapped, and with such force that some excess energy rebounded with such force that the machine completely tore itself apart and the Orks scattered, a few of them cheering at a truly awesome explosion. (Much time would be spent pouring over the recording of this and experienced Burna Boyz giving their opinion on the finer technicalities of that explosion.) Kah-Mee-Nah and his fellows, on the other hand, were fired like bullets hard enough to send a mighty shockwave throwing the unprepared Orks backwards; bullets aimed at that distant speck on the horizon that was the Total Drama Airship. For a moment the Orks saw them all ascending into the sky like a green fireball, the Ork's belief that this would work making so that it did, Da Boss' overwhelming power erupting like volcano-fire in a green shower all around them, moving so fast that Da Boys only saw it for a moment. Then they were a green speck, ascending higher into the sky than many birds dared to fly. And then, except for a gleam in the distant-most horizon, they were gone.

Da Boyz cheered at this success, and decided to throw a party to celebrate. Later, Thrall thought he had heard Kah-Mee-Nah shout, "_LATER BUDDIES!_" just before he went.

...

A few minutes later, Kah-Mee-Nah was still having trouble not screaming in glee at the awesomeness. "I'MMA DO THIS MORE OFTEN!" He shouted, eyes wide and crazed, the telekinetic shield around them keeping off the worst of the winds and pressure and other nasty bits about being fired into the sky from a giant slingshot. Boota, secured by a bunch of straps to the back of Kah-Mee-Nah's head, nonetheless clung to a small set of broken goggles around Kah-Mee-Nah's neck like it was a good luck charm.

"WHAT?" Lakkibrok said, temporarily deafened. "I COULDN'T HEAR YOU! HEY, THIS IS FRAKKING AWESOME! FASTA FASTA _FASTA!_"

"WHOOOO!" Bitz yelled, the speed freak legacy of his tribe screaming out from his very soul and the only thing keeping him from jumping out of his war trukk and hanging on for dear life just to get closer for the speed and the sheer insane thrill of it was the straps. (Kah-Mee-Nah thought ahead! Sometimes.) "WAZDAKKA, YAZ CAN EAT MAH GRITS!"

"DEY SAID I WUZ CRAZY TA TURN MYSELF INTO A ITTY-BITTY KILLA KAN!" Chopstop boasted. "DEY SAID I WUZ CRAZY TA MADE IT ATMOSPHERE-RESISTANT AND AERODYNAMIC! 'WHEN IS YAZ EVER GONNA GO FLYING?' DEY ASKED ME! WHO'S FLYING NOW, ZOGGERS?"

Brikspok wiggled his arms. "WHEE!" He said. The other Orks gave him a disappointed look for such a lame reaction. "What? Flyin' gives me da willies."

The mighty bullet shaped bundle of Orks (Kah-Mee-Nah totally counted as an Ork) arced over the sky, their destination in the sky growing more apparent. As Gritzgrotz looked down, he noticed a ship down below and he took the oppertunity to throw a discarded can as hard as he could; it punched through the telekinetic shell without harming the shell, moving so fast as it fell to sea that it burst into flames halfway and missed the ship by a good margin, hitting the ocean with such force that a huge depth charge boomed out of the water with a forty-foot high waterspout, scaring the living daylights out of the tourists on the nearby cruiseship. Gritzgrotz chuckled. Kah-Mee-Nah smacked him. "Don't litter, it ain't nice! I used ta live in a place with tons of litter, _it ain't fun!_" He paused, and smacked him again, adding, "_And don't almost sink ship for giggles!"_

"How'd yaz hit me from all da way over there!" Gritzgrotz demanded.

"_DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF LOVE!"_ Kah-Mee-Nah roared and raised his fist in indignation; green power swelled out of his flesh and spun around his fist, much like the larger mass swirling around them all. "NO FORCE CAN STOP THE MIGHT OF MY BROTHERLY _FIST_!"

"Okay," Gritzgrotz said, finding nothing wring with that.

It might have been a mistake for Kah-Mee-Nah to generate more power, even just a little like that; it was immediately sucked up into the greater resevoir protecting them, pumping it up again, the front end turning a pointed shape like a drill and all of it spinning faster than before. And, as a result, they accelerated _ever more than before_.

The people on the cruise ship below, already staggered to have apparently just been under attack, were even more stunned to see a green meteor appear out of nowhere and streak across the horizon, as suddenly out of sight as it had come from nowhere.

The six of them shot through the sky like the bullet they looked like, drilling right through the air without slowing in the least, clouds breaking apart and fillign up the vaccum they created in their wake, and many who could see the sight of cloud formations tearing apart like this deemed it a portent, mostly of the ill-fated sorts. They arced ever higher, sailing to greater and greater heights...

And then, it finally came into clear view. A huge zeppelin of a design alien to this world, an enormous and elongated balloon bearing a smaller but still unbelievably big structure beneath, all red paints and elaborate curls of brass shaped like a man's idea of flames. The Total Drama logo was painted on their side of the airship's enveloup, the not-quite-faded stylized flame mark just beneath it.

As their path brought them closer to it, Kah-Mee-Nah was struck by how off this airship was for this world. It didn't seem to belong; it was too big for local zeppelins, the culture that had produced wasn't of this world, it just wasn't _appropiate_. And the look of it! It was a fierce thing, all jagged angles and rough protrusions. It was a means of warfare, a machine meant to faciliate killing; the Orks knew war machines when they saw one, gene-programmed knowledge going back to their earliest proginators screaming this. And here it was, made into a tool for tormenting twenty-five humies that didn't know just what they had gotten into.

It's underside was coming closer; Kah-Mee-Nah roared, "SPIN ON!" and rather than summoning more of his particular hot-blooded energies, simply siphoned off a good deal of the excess energy around him, drawing it down into the Dakkacycle, green shimmering through the metal and turning it's front into a brilliantly shining light, full of energy that he directed, pushing it into a shape natural for it's purposes, and in moments, the energy swelled up into pseudo-matter just visible under the swirling green, growing larger and more defined, and then the light of it broke apart, revealing a massive drill affixed to the front of the Dakkacycle.

His fellow Orks activated the drills on their vehicles, the power tools roaring to life just as they started to slow down, the energy keeping them going so fast rapidly being drawn into their machines. Not quite done, Kah-Mee-Nah forced _more _of the energy into all the drills, making them triple in size until their vehicles were dwarfed by the glowing drills extending from their fronts.

"Boss, we ain't gonna make it!" Lakkibork cried, noticing that they had lost almost all of their terminal velocity; they could begin to fall at any moment, or simply smash into the airship.

"SCREW THAT!" Kah-Mee-Nah bellowed defiantly. "WE'Z GONNA MAKE IT! BELIEVE WE WILL, AND IT'LL HAPPEN!"

"WE'LL DO IT FOR SURE!" Brikspok agreed. Chopstop and Gritzgrotz roared in approval, ever confident in their Big Bro Da Boss.

Lakkibrok heisitated for a moment, they had been yelling so loud he had heard them even dispite being a bit deaf. "I...uh..." Slowly, he grinned. "I DUN' BELIEVE WE'LL MAKE IT, I _KNOW _WE'LL MAKE IT!"

The green power around them surged up, and for the final time, they accelerated.

"SPIN!" Kah-Mee-Nah boomed, tilting his vehicle hard to the side. The Orks followed suit, throwing their considerable weight into it, and their bundle of vehicles began to _spin_ like the drills they sported, the energy around them surging mightily and spinning as well, great streamers of emerald power flashing away like a hundred little comet-tails.

Kah-Mee-Nah shouted, "_Boyz! Combination...IM-__**PACT!**_" and the low side of the airship loomed like a on-coming metal juggernaut, and like any other obstacle that had ever gotten in the way of Kah-Mee-Nah and Da Boyz _(spinning, spinning, they drill through the air, the drills of their vehicles and the big one of the energy field around them and they just pierce the walls of foot-deep metal)_, they smashed right through it.

More than half of the accrued velocity that got them there had been short just before impact. Nonetheless, they still struck so hard (smashing right through the wall and the energy field finally gave out in a explosive blast of green and bounced on the ceiling of the brig and hit the floor really hard) that the entire airship tilted a little bit, just enough to knock the unknowing contestants head-over-heels in whatever they were engaged in (Owen is knocked across a hallway mere moments before a killer robot can spring on him and falls to it's doom; Eva, Noah and Izzy fall down in a tangled heap and crash onto Ezekiel, finally capturing him after some time spent trying to catch him; Alejandro and Heather are knocked off their feet and into a open closet that locks behind them; Rossiu was thrown right out of the bed he'd and waking him from a truly unusual dream where he had been elected Space Pope and now he had a concussion now too; Sierra and Cody are lifted off their feet and right out their door, and they take it as a omen that they ought to leave their room already even if it means possibly being away from each other for even a _few minutes_, dreadful though it is).

The airship was quite easily reoriented. The contestants were a bit freaked out, demanding to know what the hell had hit them. But down on the brig, in the very same place where the Total Drama kids have first come into the airship not so long ago, Kah-Mee-Nah fell out of his seat, rubbed a sore spot on his arm and got up, not further hurt in any way. "Dat was pretty metal," He said, looking a bit winded from a heavy adrenaline rush. "...I _totally _gotta do that again! But better. Needs more rockets. Maybe some fireworks. And maybe some stompas, they work for everythin'. Ooh! I know! We'll shoot ourself in giant robots wearing rockets that shoot fireworks! Also, we'll have wolves doin' the shooting. Wolves is badass."

"Totally," Chopstop agreed, trying to disentagle himself from the straps and such. "Oy, leggo my leg!"

"I ain't touchin' yer leg!" Bitz said, having some trouble with the straps. He managed to get them off, but only in such a way that they wound up wrapped around his throat and he almost strangled. Luckily, Lakkibork crawled up and cut them out. "Gah, that was lucky!"

"Yoz'd be lucky if yaz didn't keep gettin' inta accidents and like," Gritzgrotz said, stepping out of his war trukk without any problems.

"Ain't yaz da one dat keeps shootin' him?" Brikspok said, glowing green as he floated to the ground.

"...Shut it!"

"Why'z all dis funny stuff happened to me?" Bitz complained. With uncanny timing, Chopstop accidentally stepped on him. "_Zog_ it!"

"Whoops," Chopstop said, carefully moving his foot away.

"Didja hear dat crunching noise! I t'ink dat was my BACK!"

Chopstop peered at him. "...Nope, ya spine's just fine. I think...yeah, it wuz just da chocolate in yer pocket."

"_GAH! DAT'S EVEN WORSE!"_

"Aw right, boyz!" Kah-Mee-Nah said, after they got that stuff sorted out. (There were many hittings involved. Bitz came off worse, naturally. He was ashamed; he'd come off second to a _Gretch_.) "Let'z get down ta business! What'z we gonna do!"

The Orks tensed, ready to get started some good screaming and rallying and enthusiastic narration...and paused. They looked at each other, glancing at the floor, and didn't shout anything. Lakkibork coughed. Brikspok shuffled his feet. They looked embarrased, astonishingly. "Um..." Gritzgrotz said after a moment. "I dunno. Wot?"

Kah-Mee-Nah raised a finger, his face grinning madly...and paused. His grin fell into a puzzled frown. He lowered his finger, thought mightily...and finally shrugged. "I dunno either," He confessed. "Didn't t'ink dis far ahead, tell ya honest."

The Orks considered this. "Eh, fair enuff," Lakkibork said. "Used ta run wif a Warboss dat picked fight by throwin' darts at a board. I wuz a dart! Yaz aktually _thought _about getting us here!"

Kah-Mee-Nah nodded. "Toldja foreplanning wuz worth it." Gritzgrotz rolled his eyes but didn't challenge Kah-Mee-Nah. "So...uh...eh, guess we'll just look around dis place until we find da kids." An idea appeared to strike him. "An' while yer at it, help 'em out by taking out da crazy stuff dey're tormentin' them with! Smash the traps! Knock down da animals! Shut-down da killer robots! Help da kids any way ya can! Got it?"

The Orks agreed enthusiastically, though to be honest, they would have probably greeted any plan that way. "YEAH!" Bitz said. "We'll smash 'em up, just like _THIS!_" He ran over to their vehicles and gave the clamp a vicious kick. It immediately depowered, all the vehicles seperating, and the Dakkacycle and Gritzgrotz's war trukk fell right on him, "...I'm okay..." He said weakly.

"My war trukk!" Gritzgrotz yelled in horror. Kah-Mee-Nah glared at him. "And...uh...Bitz too! I guess. Oh no, not my war trukk! And Bitz! Does dat sound betta?"

"You suck!" Kah-Mee-Nah said, and smacked him on the head. In the meantime, Bitz got out from under the vehicles, extremely dizzy but quite unharmed. "Okay boyz...let's start looking! Based on wot we've seen, dey's probably on da upper levels, see?"

The Orks nodded. "Yoz got it, Boss!"

"Not like it's gonna take us a while or anything, right?" Lakkabork said hopefully. Kah-Mee-Nah winced. The other Orks glared at him. "Wot?"

"Ya jinxed it!" Kah-Mee-Nah said.

"...Oops?"

"Doesn't _anyone _pay attention to these things!" Brikspok complained.

"Hey, how is we s'posed to get up there anyways?" Gritzgrotz pointed out. "Ta da upper levels, I mean."

Kah-Mee-Nah paused. "...I have no idea."

...

The rest of the day passed; while it is the acceptable thing in this circumstance to say that it did without incident, this is a gross error in light of the contestant's personality clashes and the fact that there were now Orks aboard.

Instead, it can be considered that nothing overwhelmingly dramatic or sufficient epic occured in that time; all that transpired were what, on the ship, had come to be defined as life as normal; the contestants defending themselves from the hazards of their prison-transport, new non-contest related alliances being made without anyone quite aware of it, some of the teens performing their own projects meant for escape or just occupying their hassled minds, the harried interns keeping the ship running or doing their part to harrass the contestants based on their personal inclinations..._that _had become normal for them.

A new kind of normal had arrived on the ship. Or to be more accurate, the death of normality had arrived on the ship, the destroyers of stasis and murderers of loathsome standards such as they would surely encounter. (That was part of the point for them coming at all.)

It wasn't good at staying hidden, either, as Sierra and Cody had deducted.

So, in the bunker that served as the headquarters for the production staff of the Total Drama series, Chris was in a grumpy mood, having been escorted by a creepy and impatient employee of the producers to attend to his actual duties, which since he wasn't actively hosting the show on-site anymore required somewhat more technical responsibilities. (In other words, he was in charge of editing the clips to create the illusion of a narrative.)

He sat in a big chair in front of a television monitor, housed in a small room with a fair number of video equipment in it, and gave the man who had escorted him a petulant look; he wasn't at all happy to have been literally dragged out of the shower, forced into a pair of shorts and shoved into this chair. "Man, you have problems," He said, crossing his arms and making grumpy noises. "They should have laws against that. You saw my everything and stuff."

"Geez, you are such a baby," the man who'd done this; on second thought, Chris wasn't certain if this person was actually male. He, or whatever, was an androgyne with extremely light skin (Chris had seen worms and other parasites with the same texture as this...person), wearing a black suit that showed off a slim figure that was like an athletic woman's except for the plainly flat chest and masculine hips. His face was beautiful in the way that a man's could sometimes be, though the features were unquestionably feminine; Chris blamed the way his escort wore his long black hair in a girlish style that reminded him of a palm tree. His eyes were the weirdest shade of brown Chris had ever seen, so bright that they were actually _red_. And the pupils were off somehow. Almost like a _snake's._

The person coughed; it was the meanest sound Chris had ever heard. It was like the kind of sound a snake would make after biting you so it could express it's disgust at having to waste precious venom on your worthless carcass. "Okay, okay!" Chris said. He glanced at the nametag on the business suit: Levia T. Han. (It sounded like a cheap alias. It probably was.) "Geez, what's with you producer guys being so uptight all the time? You guys have _got _to learn to relax. Heart attacks, they're gonna happen."

The freak in the suit clicked his tongue. Chris tried not to shudder; he'd heard noises like that before, and they came from scaley things that bit. "Y'know, I've been meaning to ask you something, kid. Why is it you talk like a surfer boy when you're from Newfoundland?"

"What, you have something against the way I talk?"

Han snickered; it was a...weird way to laugh. He shut his eyes as tight as he could and grinned as wide as he could, showing a big white smile that was nonetheless full of teeth sharpened to points, and he made the weirdest noise Chris had ever heard and associated with happiness; a mix between a girl's giggling and a bass chuckle, with a touch of sibilance when he had to breathe, his throat bulging at the sides with every breath and his thin lips never once sliding back over those pointed teeth like he wanted to bite the world in the throat.

This guy was seriously creepy. And Chris had met a lot of geuinely creepy people; if this guy had had the gospel of a forbidden cults dedicated to slaughtering kittens to end the world written on every inch of his skin to spell out nausea-inducing atrocities and fetishes, it would have been a step up in creepiness because it would have an essential honesty of purpose. Han clapped Chris on the bare shoulder, his hand smacking against glistening flesh with a sound like a hammer on tender meat; Chris winced. Dude was _strong_. "I _like _you," Han said, still grinning like a monster and patting him on the shoulder hard enough to smack the bone. "You've got the kind of attitude that'd take you real far in my line of work."

"Oh yeah," Chris said, rubbing his shoulder and wincing; there was going to be a bruise for sure. "What job is that?" _Seriously,_ he thought. _What the hell?_

"Oh, this and that. I go places. Talk to people, make new friends." He grinned again, wider and weirder than ever. "Start some shit, know what I mean?"

"Sure," Chris lied. "Seriously, ow. You hit like a bear or something."

"I'm just made of sterner stuff than you." Levia T. Han chuckled. "Anyway, the bosses are bitching about stuff. Got a new episode to air in less than a few days and we've, uh, run into a few _weird _stuff that you oughta see. Responsibilities and stuff for the new season format."

"Yay," Chris said, with all the enthusiasm of a diseased parrot. (A far more dire state than most people assume.) A thought occured to him. "Hey, I'm not a kid!"

Han chuckled; Chris tried not to recoil. "Compared to me? _Yes. You are_." Han looked directly into Chris eyes, peering from over his head, and he looked older than anything Chris had ever seen. Old in the way that iron maidens and guillotines were old.

"You're all kinds of creepy, man," Chris said, not one to keep his opinions to himself. "Even worse than the usual nutbars I deal with."

"I get that a lot." Han mercifully pulled away. "Anyway...weird footage. Take a look-see."

"Aw man, do I have to?" Chris whined.

"_Yes,_" Han said in an amazing mimicry of Chris' voice; if he'd heard it anywhere else, Chris would have thought that it had been a recording of him. "Seriously, this was your idea."

"Was not!"

"Okay, geez, more with the whining! Not your idea for _this _kind of thing, I'll give ya that, but..." Han paused, smirking. "It _was _your idea to monitor those kids instead of you being on-site. Guess who's monitoring the big stuff?"

Chris rolled his eyes. He had been fully aware of his new responsibilities in his altered role; he'd insisted on changing it, actually. The..._incident _with Sierra and his dearly beloved plane had made him a bit cautious about being near the chaos that followed in the contestant's wake. He'd done this sort of thing before, looking through the footage for the most interesting and important scenes that would make some sort of false narrative good enough for the TV viewers, pruning out the boring stuff (and the things that would make even the forgiving and bloodthirsty audience shocked at what the contestants were going through), setting aside interesting but unimportant stuff for 'extended cut' episodes in case a week went by without anything good happening and they needed to fill up an episode somehow.

That had always been a scheduled thing; he planned his days around it, he got the footage viewing catered. Being dragged out of shower, forced to get dressed and shoved into a chair to do his job was _not _business as usual at all. Chris had a brief impulse to stall just to spite people, but he didn't think it was worth the effort. "Oh, fine!" Chris scooted the chair up. "So what's all the whining about weird footage? The kids finally snap and go on a murdering spree? Have an orgy? A murder-orgy? Orchestrate a really elaborate song-and-dance number with wonderful cherography and a totally kickass rock montage? I hope it's not the last one, it'd be like they do it just to get back at me for last season. They didn't give _me _an epic song-and-dance number."

"You forced them to sing all last season."

"Yeah, _forced_! Where's the fun if they don't choose to do it, huh?"

"I dunno. Funny? It's always way more entertaining if you make people do stuff, espicially if they _really _don't want to do it. Song and dance numbers, community service, romantic comedy movies, genocide..."

Chris nodded sagely. "Yeah, totally get where you're coming from." He paused. "Wait, what was that last one?"

"It had absolutely nothing to do with implications that I've tricked people into mass murder." Han snickered gleefully. "And it's all such damn good _fun!_ Er, is what I would say if I had done stuff like that. Which I totally haven't."

Chris gave him a sidelong look and scooted his chair slightly away. "Um, yeah...I'm gonna...move over here now."

"Why do people do that whenever I talk about my greatest accomplishments?" Han complained. "Do I smell weird? Is that it? Do I have a funky odor that would outdo the Nurgalites and their regular contests of unbelivable funk-itude, a smell fit to bring famines and kill entire populations and summon forths daemons of smell because my smell was so bad the creature took it as a challenge?" He turned to Chris. "You'd tell me if it was my weird smell, right?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Chris said, not really listening.

Not looking at all reassured (and grieviously concerned about the unstated degrees of his funk-itude), Han turned the machine on, presumably now opening up communication channels for the footage or something similar (Chris wasn't much for technical issues. He had people to do that for him). In fairly short order, the footage started playing and Chris resigned himself to the task at hand.

The very image was of Cody and (Chris twitched a little bit) Sierra, both of them sitting at the top of a small seige tower made from random junk they'd put together, squatting right in the middle of a corridor. Strange weapons from cobbled-together robot bits extended through gaps in the walls and there were a few disassembled killer robots lying around, and Cody was posised over small piles of their component parts, reassembling into...something. Sierra was doing much the same thing, and it was difficult to tell if she was leading this little project or if he was. They also looked fairly filthy; Chris wrinkled his nose, wondering how badly they had to stink. "Okay, what's going on here?" He asked, pausing it.

"Everybody on that ship is going a little crazy from cabin fever, stress and danger," Han said. "Psychologically speaking? Looks like those kids are dealing with it by making a fort and...doing something on computers in their rooms. Not sure what. We don't have good angles in there."

"Manage the National Dwarf-Tossing Championship?" Chris suggested. Han gave him a look. "What? Dwarf-tossing is a big deal in my family!" Han continued to give him a look. It was not a friendly look. It was, at best, the kind of look that suggetested that the look-giver considered you to be an insect, and not the environmentally friendly pest-eating sort either. "What's the big deal here, anyway? Something specifically interesting about these two?"

Han looked like he had something on his mind, but he shook his head. "Not really. You could say they're, ah, symptomatic of the general loonyness you've set up."

Chris blinked. "Really? Cool."

"Observe," Han said, fast-forwarding it a bit; when he stopped it, Sierra and Cody were much the same as they were, except now they were just sitting on a pile of cushions in the middle of the fort and staring at the floor; the robot parts had been assembled into what looked like a crude pair of metal boots that Cody was wearing for some reason.

And astonishingly, they were loonier than usual. "I wonder if someone has ever played the lava game with such gusto that they burned their feet," Sierra said to herself, idlely playing with a strand of hair that had gone stringy.

"Huh," Cody said, fiddling with his new boots. (They seemed unneccesary, since he was wearing them over his shoes.) "I never thought about it." He paused. "Hey, Sierra."

"Yeah?"

"I always wondered. How much wood...could a woodchuck chuck...if a woodchuck could chuck _antelope_?"

Sierra blinked. "...It depends on the woodchuck's lifting power, general enthusiasm, whether or not he's being compensated, and if so, how much."

Cody nodded. "And another great mystery of the universe is solved. And now there's just what that omen we saw was about. Half the time I think it just means I'm going to _die _on this airship." (Watching this, Chris grimaced. He'd heard them talk about that omen a fair bit since they'd come aboard and it was starting to get on his nerves: he'd set up a lot of incidents to befall them both just to make them think _that _was what the omens were about, but none of it had worked.)

"No way!" Sierra said. Cody smiled gratefully at her, and there was a banging at a door they had put into the floor. (After tearing it out of the wall it was in.) Sierra flinched and looked at the floor again. "Ugh, the floor's getting all weird-looking. Either sleep deprivation and lack of food is making me goofy in the head..._or the power of collective belief has made the floor made of lava!_"

"But there's only one of you," Cody said, his fingers halting in their examination of his mechanical boots

"I'm big enough for three people," Sierra said. "Maybe four, if the fourth's a skinny person."

Cody blinked a long hard blink, as if processing this. He gave Sierra's larger frame a speculative look, looked at the floor...and then he screamed like a little girl and jumped into her lap, throwing his arms around her midsection and wailed miserably. "_Save me from the floor lava! I'm too young to die! Possibly, I'm actually sure how old I am anymore! Damn you, multiple missed birthdays! YOUR ABSENCE HAS LEFT ME CONFUSED AND UNSURE AND POSSIBLY UNDERWEIGHT FROM LACK OF CAKE! DAMN YOOOU!_"

Sierra tightened her grip around Cody; he gave a little boyish squeak, though he clearly welcomed her grasp. (This, Chris noted, was a considerable difference from the behavior he was used to. He cackled malevolently, plotting ways to stir up the fandom shippers. Han rolled his eyes, because he thought human romance was gross.) Perhaps to save himself from the 'lava', or more likely because his position was a bit awkward, he wrapped his arms around her as much as he could and settled a bit more snugly into her lap like she was his favorite cushion or something. (She was big enough for it. Or he was small enough for it. Possibly a mixture of the two.)

The door on the floor slammed open, and Leshawna, Justin, Harold and Nikigok dressed like an intern climbed up, all except Nikigok wearing goofy-looking wigs and foil-covered hands with tiny candles on top. "NO!" Cody wailed. "Don't come in, THE LAVA WILL TAKE YOUR SOULS! And ruin your shoes. You don't want lava eating your shoes." He paused, staring at Nikigok, who waved. "...Why is there an alien with you guys?"

They turned around. "Yo," Nikigok said. "Wait, I'z definitely NOT an alien!"

"Yes you are!" Sierra said. "I can see you right there. Being all alien-y and stuff."

"Newp!" Nikigok scoffed. "I iz definitely a intern! And also a humie. JUST LOOK AT MY NECK!"

"Yes!" Justin said. "It is quite impressive, that neck."

There was a long beat. Leshawna and Harold had the grace to look embarrased. "He kinda started following us around and he won't go away," Leshawna said. "He's good at whuppin' the crazy stuff that attacks us and he doesn't eat a lot, so...yeah, we got a live-in alien."

"I iz an intern!" Nikigok said stubbornly.

"No you're not," Everyone said flatly. Nikigok pouted.

Everyone but Justin. "He's _dressed _like an intern," Justin remarked. "And clothing hasn't lied to me yet!" Behind him, Harold facepalmed.

"Okay," Sierra said. "You're so totally an alien! You're not even bothering to disguise yourself!" At Nikigok's infuriatingly smug expression, she said, "You're, like, four feet tall!"

"I come from a family of shorties. Great-Grandpa was so big he could ride a horse, but that's as tall as we get, yeah?"

"Your pointed ears with all the piercings?"

"Lots of surgery. It big thing where I come from! Cousin Gogik went deaf after he passed through a magnet factory..."

"The green skin?"

"I'm not green!" Nikigok flinched as he said this, as though betraying some ancient racial principle, but he went onward. "I'm..._very jaundiced_."

"And your red eyes!" Sierra demanded.

"You silly person, you. Have you never heard of..._PINK EYE!_"

"...Pink eye doesn't look like that," Harold said, having been watching the conversation and staring suspiciously at Nikigok for some time.

"It doesn't?" Nikigok asked, looking worried. Harold shook his head. Nikigok fell to his knees and wailed to the skies, "YOU LIED TO ME, HIGHLY DUBIOUS INTERNETS!"

"You're totally an Ork," Cody told him.

"Actually, I iz a Gretch. Grot. Haven't settled on one word fer it." They stared at Nikigok. "Aw, crap. I just blewed my secret identity."

"Wasn't secret to begin with!" Leshawna said, ignoring the crazy-ass goblin-thing and marching right over to Sierra and Cody, Harold and Justin with her and trying not to react to the smell.

Justin didn't manage very well. "THE SMELL! I CAN ALREADY FEEL IT BLEACHING MY SKIN! IT BURNS!"

"It doesn't stink like your deodorant does!" Sierra said defensively.

Justin winced. "You don't have to get _personal_...hey, you're not at all enticed by it?"

"Nope!"

"And you can _smell _it?"

Sierra wrinkled her nose. "Wish I didn't, but yeah."

"THE DEODORANT DOESN'T DRIVE MAD WOMEN INTO MOLESTING FRENZIES!" Justin yelled. "The commercials lied to me!"

"Totally," Sierra said. "I have way more class than that! Probably." Everyone looked at Sierra. She pouted. "I do _not _go into molesting frenzies at the drop of the hat! Why does everyone think I do that!"

"Just about every televised moment we've had together?" Cody suggested.

"Oh, right," Sierra said. She lightly brought her face to Cody's, forehead to forehead. "I bring this upon myself."

"Yes," Cody agreed with a smile. "Yes you do."

"Noah really wasn't kidding when he said they were losing it," Harold said. "Or going totally codepedant. Wait, is that a bad thing with these two?" Leshawna shrugged, supposing that Cody having a girlfriend would stop him from hitting on all the other girls, and that having someone depend on Sierra might help even out her craziness, given what she knew about her. (Also, she thought they were adorable together. Bridgette and Gwen agreed, though Leshawna suspected that Gwen had her own ulterior motives for doing so.) Harold glanced at the computers Sierra and Cody had dragged up there, a diagrams, notes and other things still there. He took a look at what the monitors said, which was basically a summery of all the stuff they had found. His eyes widened with surprise. "Gosh! Look at all this stuff! This is _just _what I totally was hoping for! I knew they might find some stuff out, but I didn't think they'd get all _this_..."

"WE ARE AWSOME!" Sierra and Cody cheered. They bonked their foreheads together. "Ow," Cody said.

"Wow, dat's a lotta good reportin'," Nikigok commented, walking over. "Heh, they even got the graffiti I did for Bro Kah-Mee-Nah." Harold stared at him. "Er, not dat _I _did any o' dat. Or was there with Da Boyz at any time. Yeah."

"You just said you were!" Cody yelled.

"I'M HUMAN!" Nikigok shrieked. "Yep, definitely human! I iz _DEFINITELY _not an alien sent by da most badass and awesome guy with _EPIC SHADES_ to come over here and spy on yaz fer a bit and mebbe sabotage da evil things da wanna hurt you." They stared at him some more. "...My butt is itchy!" He scratched himself, with entirely too much enthusiasm.

Sierra blinked at Leshawna, who blinked back, trying to process the insanity and doing her best to ignore Nikigok instead of damage her brain by immersing herself in the craziness. Leshawna frowned, noticing what Harold was examining. "What's all that about? Is that what you two were holed up in your room with!"

"Technically, we're now holed up in this fort," Cody said.

"I promised Izzy we'd leave our room and we so _totally _did!" Sierra said cheerfully. "Now we're in a fort we won't leave, but we're outside the room, right?"

Harold ignored their rambling and shrugged guiltily. "I...uh, I asked Sierra and Cody to check out the stuff on the aliens that showed up not too long ago."

"Wait. Aliens?" Leshawna glanced sharply at Nikigok. "No freaking way. There's others here besides that little shortie?"

"WE IZ DEFINITELY NOT HERE TO BLOW SHIT UP!" Nikigok said. "...Fer da Right an' Proppa! Seriously."

Harold blinked at Leshawna. "Wow, you must not be keeping up with the news."

"Harold, little reminder? _We're on a airship and isolated from the rest of the world, fighting for our lives!_"

"Didn't stop them," Harold said, pointing at Sierra and Cody. Justin was now poking Sierra in the head, perhaps testing her to see if she was a real human girl or not; he found her continued attraction and love for Cody over his own sexual appeal to be deeply suspect and a bit of a personal insult. Nikigok was staring at Sierra and Cody with deep fascination, for some reason.

"Nope," Cody agreed. He frowned. "What's with the goofy hats and wigs you guys are wearing?"

"As...uh...protections and stuff from really spooky stuff," Leshawna said evasively. "You guys missed some big stuff. On the other hand, from what I heard, you didn't _want _to be there."

"...Huh?" Sierra said.

"It was _DEMONS!_" Justin screamed. "_DEMONS!_ They totally, like, _TORE INTO THE NEW INTERN GUY!_" He shuddered. "I had to help clean the mess he made in the infirmiry. It was _so gross_."

"Actually, yaz pronounces 'daemon' with an 'A'," Nikigok said cheerfully. "That's how yaz know it's _our _daemons yaz talking about. An' them daemons ain't DAT tough. Proper wusses, yaz see. Now, make fun of da humie's God-Emperor in front of Boss Viral, now _DAT'S SCARY! _Like dumping blood into a shark's pool or throwing a kitty into da pool. Wait, Boss Viral _is _a kitty-shark...person...thing. Or is it shark-kitty...person...thing? Never asked. Bit of a muck-up, eh?"

No one was listening to Nikigok, but Cody and Sierra had certainly heard the bit about Rossiu getting hurt. Just for a moment, their state of cheerful looniness wavered. Neither of them said anything, but they had mutual looks of horror. (Well, Sierra did; Cody was still staring up into her face to avoid looking at anything else for some reason, they couldn't see his face too well.) "Really?" Sierra squeaked. "The daemon thing, not what the little alien guy was yammering about."

"I IZ NOT AN ALIEN." Nikigok said. "AND I CAN'T STOP YELLING CALMLY. HOW AM I TALKING LIKE THAT? WAIT, I'M NOT CALM NO MORE! _NEVER MIND!_"

"Yeah, really," Leshawna said. "I didn't really buy it myself, but..." She faltered. "...I saw the mess myself." She shuddered. "Don't care if he _is _working with Chris or not, that stuff ain't _right_."

"The wigs and hats ward them away," Harold said solemnly. "Trent tells me it's an old family secret of his."

"...Because the hats and wigs are really the holy relics of an ancient order of demon-killing monks and they're anathema to the demons?" Cody guessed.

"No, it's because these hats and wigs are so stupid looking that any demon who sees them would flee in utter horror of their tacky-ness!" Harold said. "Even nefarious fiends that dwell in the places that seek to unmake all reality have standards, you know."

"Of course," Sierra agreed.

Nikigok shivered. "So...tacky! Can't look...directly at it!"

"Hey, it works against demons _and _crazy creepy alien saboteurs!"

"Hey, I'm not _creepy_ or a saboteur!" Nikigok said, offended. Sierra stared at him. "Uh, or an alien."

"...Aren't you forgetting something?" Sierra said.

"Hmm...nope, can't think of anything."

"Wait, how could you notice our wigs and stuff?" Justin said skeptically to Cody. "You've been staring into Sierra's face for the last five minutes or so!"

"I looked through the reflection in Sierra's eyes," Cody said dreamily. "So pretty. Her eyes, not the wigs. It's important to me that you realize what I'm talking about."

"Aw!" Sierra said, wiggling with joy. "I feel all warm and fuzzy inside!"

"That's both sort of cute and really creepy," Leshawna said. "I'm gonna go with mostly creepy if anyone asks."

"Dis is that romance stuff humies get all worked up over?" Nikigok asked. "...Humies is _lame_." Sierra threw a screw at him. "Ooh, I'm getting free stuff! Good fights, nice table scraps _and _industrial products! This is da best mission _EVER_."

Leshawna went over to Sierra and grabbed her hand, (Because she didn't want to waste time seperating Cody from her, and she suspected that he had a better grip then he looked) pulling her to her feet with a mighty grunt; Sierra was quite a bit taller than Leshawna, and while Cody weighed even less than he looked, it was still adding weight to Sierra's already considerable size advantage. "Come on you two," Leshawna grunted. "Let's get some food in you and a good bath, if I can get find one that doesn't have giant robot spiders riding slightly more giant fighting robots in it. Maybe that'll make you guys less crazy."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Cody said, in a brief moment of clarity. "SIERRA! WATCH OUT FOR THE LAVA! It's making funny faces at me. And I think it just flipped me off. Not cool, man."

Nikigok gave the floor a dirty look. "You bastard."

Sierra ran her free hand through Cody's hair, fingers digging through the strands and lightly stroking his scalp, and she kept him propped up against her with her arm. "I, uh, have really tiny lava-proof stilts. That are also invisible."

"Okay," Cody said, finding that perfectly sensible in his current craziness and not realizing how weird it was for _Sierra _to be the sensible and sane one for a change.

Justin looked at Harold. "...Is he being serious, or is he just making it up to be funny?"

"I don't know," Harold confessed. "He's spent, like, half a week alone with Sierra without any food or barely any sleep; who knows what sort of wackiness has rubbed off?"

"I HEARD THAT!" Sierra said.

"I know, I wasn't really trying to be quiet," Harold said.

"Oh, alright then," Sierra said, forgetting the matter instantly. It was either her being nice to one of Cody's few friends (even one that wasn't quite as close to him as Sierra had become, though Harold was _real _close to it), or just her short attention-span getting even shorter.

"Bah, I've seen crazier'," Nikigok said dismissively. Justin, Leshawna, Harold and Sierra stared at him incredulously. "Might give Bro Kah-Mee-Nah a run fer his money...maybe. I guess. Wouldn't bet big money on it, though."

Justin rolled his eyes at the annoying tagalong's behavior, refusing to believe that anyone could be so stupid...and then he noticed the switches on Cody's metal boots. "Hey, what do these do?"

"Huh?" Cody said. "WAIT! DON'T TOUCH THOSE-" Justin flipped them on and jets fired from the soles of the boots (fortunately missing Sierra's legs, and anyway the jets weren't heat-based in any way but worked on completely different and weirder principles) and he was torn from her grasp, mighty though it was, and his face was suddenly right there in the camera; there was a loud smashing noise, and it went dark; either the camera broken then, or the clip had ended.

Han waited patiently for Chris to respond. He did not. Han rolled his eyes and said, "So, jet boots! The kids turning into a regular mad scientist or something!..Dunno how _that _happened. But you see what I mean? It's getting all kinds of..." He trailed off, realizing that Chris wasn't in his seat. "Hey, where in the name of the Ouroborous did he go!"

"Yo," Chris said from behind him. "Went to dry off and change clothes. Also: jet boots! AWESOME."

"But the clip!" Han said. "Important exposition relevant to the situation at hand! Your job! You just skivved off your personal duties and no doubt wasted tons of money!" Han paused. "...I dig your style."

"Yes," Chris agreed. "Saw enough of the clip to make a snap judgement. Sierra and Cody going crazy, Leshawna and two other jerks barge in to make them clean and stuff...might work for that 'falling into insanity' sub-plot we've got going for everyone. If everyone's going as nuts as them, I could have a massive backlash from the fandom! Again. Or a psychological documentary. Think all the editing might make it invalid for submissions, though...oh yeah, and the alien. That'll go over great!"

"What?"

"Sure. Everyone loves aliens! Except Americans." Han stared blankly at Chris. "What? Don't you get political humor?"

"Nope," Han said. "And you changed clothes...?"

"Hey, I'm not comfortable in nothing but bath shorts around a dude I don't know." Chris chuckled. "Not unless I know you _real _well, know what I mean?"

For once, Han looked suitably creeped out. It was an unusual experience for him. "...I never said I was a _guy_."

"Oh." Chris looked Han up and down. "Never would have guessed. You're a bit not-so-there in the bust and your hips...don't really exist. Still, you're kinda cute in a vaugely androgynous way."

"Oh, I never said I was a _girl _either," Han said, looking a touch puzzled.

"...Right..." Chris stepped back into his seat, giving Han a funny look. "So what are you then?"

"Gender's like a rigged raffle ticket thing for me. I'll take what I can get."

"Okay, changing the subject now!"

"I'm also _not _a hermephrodite!" Han said cheerfully. "Figure _that _one out."

"CHANGING THE SUBJECT NOW!" Chris yelled. "Next clip, please!" He paused, something finally registering to him. "Wait. What was that stuff they were saying about Rossiu and demons?"

"Nothing important," Han lied. "You know what will make you forget all about creepy transgender talk?"

"PLEASE TELL ME NOW," Chris begged.

"_VOODOO!_" Han shouted.

"...What."

Han fiddled around with the footage-machine-thing (Chris was pretty sure that was the technical term). The screen quickly displayed a lunchroom of some sort that Chris recognized from a good chunk of footage.

It was the cafeteria, which the contestants had taken to frequenting as some sort of home base. (Sort of.) Currently present was the entirety of Team E-Scope: Izzy was standing on top of a makeshift table, making some sort of pattern in the middle of it by dribbling ashes and other stuff on it. Noah and Eva were standing off to the side, both of them looking stoic and, if you knew them well enough to gauge their feelings, slightly apprehensive. Chris noticed that they were wearing vanilla-colored robes and silly hats akin to what Leshawna and her rescue troop had been wearing, though these had little sticky-notes pasted to them, with designs similar to the one Izzy was drawing on them.

Izzy chanted, and it was anyone's guess if she was making words up at random, actually using a foriegn langangue that no one there was familiar with, a combination of the both, or something altogether different. "This is stupid," Eva said sourly.

Noah, reading a book titled _Reaching the Overworld For The Uninformed - Stupid Things You Don't Do So You Don't Piss Off The Loa Or Some Other Pantheon_, looked up. "You mean 'this is a waste of time stupid', or do you mean 'this is ridiculously dangerous meddling-with-incomprehensible-forces stupid'?"

Eva considered this. "Both," She said after a moment.

Noah grunted. "That makes two of us."

"Shh, you guys!" Izzy said, nearly fumbling the design. "I mess this up, it'll bring massive bad juju on us! Or it just won't work. Whatever!" Noah and Eva both rolled their eyes, but they complied nonetheless. "Huh, I probably should have prepared a sacrifice or something. Oh well, I brought something almost as good, I'm sure they'll understand!" She reached into her bag and pulled out...a bottle of rum. (With a helpful note on it that said 'DEFINITELY NOT RUM'. Izzy had the same approach to subterfuge as the average Ork.) "Rum is the drink the dead like best! Wait, these guys I'm asking up aren't dead. Generally. Depends on how they got to be Loa. Eh, I'm sure they've got buddies who'll appreciate it."

A thought percolated in Noah; by the time Izzy had finished the design he couldn't hold it in anymore and said, "Uh, you ever think that maybe this isn't the best idea?"

"Whatcha mean?" Izzy said.

"...If Duncan and Bridgette and Geoff and the rest of them are right and demons attacked Rossiu after trying to posesses him or something, it seems a little counterproductive to come to the room where _demons attacked _and finding a solution to possible demonic hauntings by conjuring _voodoo gods_."

Eva grunted agreeingly. "Didn't know voodoo was a real thing anyway..."

"It's a pretty big religion," Noah said, being a master of all obscure knowledge. "Comes from Africa and the Carribean; apparently, Christianity melded with native African beliefs when the missionaries came, and what came from that is voodoo." After a moment, he added, "The stuff in the movies isn't really anything like what people actually do in voodoo."

"How do you know that?" Eva asked.

"My cousin Bernie went to the Carribeans and came back a changed person. For starters, he was now my cousin Berta, but he...she...also had gotten into voodoo big-time. It's hard not to pick stuff up when people won't shut up about it."

"So, Harold might have a use or two," Eva said.

"Oh, I wouldn't go _that _far..."

"Shush you guys, something's happening!" Izzy said. The lights in the room flickered. Once...twice...a third time. Nothing else apparently happened. "Aw, I was expecting something more dramatic-"

The shadows at the corner of the room swelled up like a tide, lapping at their feet and fading back like sacks full of dirt. "Okay, that works," Izzy said while Noah and Eva moved away, alarmed.

The design Izzy had made, what Noah told Eva was called a veve, shifted, the ash and ground chicken bones and other things that had been put into it swirling around like motes of light in a sun beam. The light flickered again, going out for a moment; there was a clattering noise while the lights were gone, and went they flickered back on, the bottle of rum had fallen over on it's side. Not a drop of rum had fallen or spilled; in fact, the bottle was completely empty.

Noah had gotten a good view of the bottle. It had been _quite _full only moments ago.

Eva stared at it for a long moment, her lips pressed so tightly that they were going white. "What the hell...?" She said softly.

"Is this supposed to happen?" Izzy said to Noah.

"Why are you asking me!" Noah snapped. "This was your idea!"

Izzy snorted. "Pretty stupid of you to let me do this, then." Both Eva and Noah had a bad case of eye-twitching.

The darkness seemed to swell up around them again. A _presence, _something mighty and strange, overpowered whatever feeling remained in the room, leaving the three of them feeling that they shared the room with with something mightier than armies and stranger by far than _anything _they had ever encountered, and then...

"Hey, are you guys waiting for something or what?" A loud and unfamiliar voice said from directly behind them. Noah, Eva and Izzy shrieked (well, Noah did, and Eva thought he sounded more like a girl than _she _did) and whirled around, gathering together into a tight little bunch. Sitting on the edge of the table with her leg's crossed was a dark-skinned woman peering at them through a pair of cheap sunglasses with a missing lense (and a veve on the other), wearing a swallowtail jacket over a fishnet shirt, fashionally tattered denim shorts and a well-worn top hat, all of her clothing black, accented with purple where the dimmed light struck her.

They stared at her for a few moments, and she stared back at them with mild curiosity. She smiled a big grin after a moment and wiped what looked suspiciously like a trace of rum off her lips and picked a pool cue (or coco macaque) from behind her, toying with the surprisingly ornate shaft. Noah thought he saw wisps of smoke trailing behind it, that looked like _faces_. (Except they weren't screaming or crying; if anything, they looked vaugely stoned and content.)

"Hi," Izzy said after a moment. "Who are you?"

"And what are you doing here?" Eva asked, glowering at the strange woman and cracking her knuckles threateningly.

"Maybe I should be asking _you _those questions," The woman said, her voice lightly accented with traces of New Orleans, and swung herself off the table. She was a startlingly tall and long-limbed woman, and she looked like she could match DJ or even Chef Hatchet in height; even so, she felt taller in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with physical stature. "'Cause...hey, you rang."

"Come again?" Noah said, blinking briefly. When he closed his eyes, she was still standing where she was; when he opened them, she was gone. "Eh?"

"What, you didn't think one of us would show?" A strong feminine hand placed itself on Noah's shoulder and lightly smacked the side of the head, though not unaffectionately. The three of them whirled around; the woman was standing right behind Noah. She chuckled good-naturedly. "Boy, don't go messing around with stuff you don't know. Bit like swearing in langaguges you're not fluent in. Heh, not like I'm one to talk. I could tell you such _stories_..."

"What?" Noah said, thoroughly bewildered. (The fact that he was a good deal smaller than the woman standing behind him wasn't helping; she was _really _pretty, and more than a little intimidating.)

"Wait," Izzy said. She looked from the veve on the table and back to the woman. She brightened up. "Ah, you're a Loa!"

"What," Noah said, but flatly this time.

"Yep," The woman said, and shadows whipped around her for a moment, half-seen and brushing past Noah's shoulder with a gently coolness, like dipping into lukewarm water after a hot day.

"...No way," Eva said, looking as bewildered as Noah. (But starting to the way woman was invading his personal space the way she was as a personal insult.)

"I think...'Loa' is the word for a functionary in the Voodoo pantheon..." Noah said slowly. He looked at the woman, who was giving him an appraising look not unlike Courtney had been giving Duncan when the two had first met. He felt a sudden nameless dread, and Eva took a half-step in front of Noah, blocking much of him from the woman in a manner that was both territorial and somewhat possessive. Noah's sense of dread got a little worse, but strangely he found the gesture reassuring. He wasn't sure why. The woman didn't miss any of this and grinned, giving him a thumb's-up. "Wait. You can't mean...no way."

"Totally," The woman said. She was suddenly _right in front of him_, crossing the intervening distance without any means of doing so, and as she did, a veil of darkness erupted around her, an utter blackness fading to darkest purple at the edges and ten thousand and more gently drifting figures just barely glimpsed behind that veil. An inescapable, perfect darkness...a darkness that seemed, nonethelesse, to be fueled by some primal and benevolent light. "I am Baronne De La Croix," She said. "Voodoo Goddess of Death, daughter of Baron Samedi and my mama Aimee, psychopomp to the newly dead (that fall under my purview, y'know), and a bunch of other stuff I can't be bothered to remember off the top of my head." She paused, and added, "Also, currently figurin' out to be top Goddess in the fields of drinking, brawling, shooting pool and making love. Trying to find a way to combine them hasn't worked out so far, but no harm in tryin'!" She laughed boisterously and grinned like a maniac. "Greetings from Ville au Camp."

"You don't say," Noah said flatly.

Eva twitched, all her inner stores of barely held rage trying to muster up some anger at this strange woman and desperately trying so very hard to not like her. It wasn't working. "Huh," Izzy said appraisingly. "Didn't know the Loa ever came in person. Didn't happen the last time I did voodoo." A sly look came into her eyes. "But the guy that I got into being the cheval..."

"Sort of like the earthly vessal for the gods," Baronne De La Croix said, answering Eva's unspoken question. "Yeah, I heard about that. Dad's still telling the story; he's done all sorts of crazy stuff and even _he _was impressed by what you got him to do. And that guy wasn't even drunk! How _did _you hook up a particle accelerator to a lawn mower and not spook the rhinos before you had the bullhorns go off?"

Izzy put a finger to her lips. "Trade secret."

"Gotcha." While Eva and Noah glanced briefly at Izzy but knew better than to ask, Baronne De La Croix gave them a fresh look. "So...what do you guys want, eh? An, uh, friend in the business asked me to pop and give you lot a hand."

"We know a guy who supposedly was attacked by demons," Noah said flatly before Izzy could derail the subject again. "In this very room, no less. Izzy got the bright idea to ask one of you for confirmation or advice. Or something, I didn't think this was actually going to work."

"Yeah, I get that a-" Baronne De La Croix stopped. "Wait. You were attacked by demons and the very first thing you do is mess with voodoo when you don't even believe in it? In the same room where there were _daemons_? Which you probably don't believe in either, given the way you put it."

"Yep!" Izzy said proudly.

"...I don't know whether to shake your hand for bravado or slap you for a horrendous lack of savviness. I mean...seriously...heck, my buddy Donner has more sense than that, and he's even more of a ditz than his daddy Thor!"

"Wait, his dad's who?" Eva said.

"Uh...never mind." Baronne De La Croix gave the room a speculative look. She sniffed the air. "Huh. Yeah. Something's weird going on here all right. Sort of like standing in a door that's opening _real _slow from both sides, y'know?"

"...Not really..." Noah said.

"And it's not just this room," She went on. "There's some major break-throughs going on _all over _this ship. Whole places is getting keyed to somewhere _else_. Not exactly an ideal situation, specially for you. And..." She paused and tilted her head. The shadows writhed around her, and she blinked. "Okay. This was unexpected."

"We're all going to die, aren't we?" Eva asked pessimistically. The Baronne ought to know, being a goddess of death.

"Eh," Baronne De La Croix said, shrugging. "That's your affair. Sorry. But that's not what I was going at; this whole _place _isn't local. This...ship...thing you got going around."

"Sure, we already knew it was foriegn-" Izzy started to say.

"You're right at that point," Baronne De La Croix interrupted. "Except you're a touch...ah...small-scale in terms of strict accuracy. This airship deal?" She tapped her coco macaque on it a few times, producing a surprisingly musical noise; it sounded like distant drums, and musical instruments that they associated with ancient Japan for some mysterious reason, and then there was the echoes of some awful discordant _noise_ lingering afterwards, like something new and not altogether welcome. "Is _not _from around here. In either an international or continential sense."

"Huh?" Noah said.

The Baronne facepalmed with her free hand. "I gotta spell everything for you? This airship, meaning this big ol' chunk of metal you're stuck in, _is not from this world and it isn't supposed to be here_. Meaning that it's got certain sympatheties for certain..._things_...that have certain bad inclinations and might just be slippin' in."

"I don't think I like where this is going."

"If you did, there'd be somethin' wrong with you." The Baronne gave them a look that was almost pitying. (Which is not a good thing when it comes from a death goddess.) "There are...ah, let's call them _entities _out there, though they're also places at the same time. And sometimes living ideas, but let's not get bogged down in the technicalities. We're talking about things that are _big_. And _crazy_. And maybe, just maybe, if you're not afraid of looking a touch provincial to some of the less moral big players, you could call them _evil_. Things like that...they'd _love _to exploit things like this place. Places that shouldn't be, yet are. Places that, in the ordinary course of things, could never be in the places they nonetheless are in. Bridges between possibilities, you might call those places. And the thing is...when you got bridges, you got people that go and cross them even when you don't want them hanging around your town." She raised an eyebrow. "Just by existing, this place could have a few doors that those _things _could exploit. Little doors, tiny ones, you'd barely notice them even if you _could _detect them...but they see them. And they know ways on making them wider. Working on making them wider, little nasty rats chewing walls open...chomp chomp chomp..."

"Okay, now you're just being really creepy," Noah said, trying to keep his emotions controlled.

"I'm a voodoo goddess, it's part of the job description in this political climate." The Baronne grinned briefly, but her expression quickly sobered. "You kids don't even know what this airship _is_, do you?"

They glanced at each other. "A flying deathtrap?" Noah guessed.

"Big hunk of stupid metal?" Eva volunteered.

"The silicon-based physical represention of a hive-mind suffused in twenty-two percent of the hermaphroditic population that awaits the day the beast with seven mouths sings the song that ends the world so it can challenge it to a rock-off for the fate of the Earth and also who has to clean the sewers of Calcutta using only a toothbrush and one-fifth of a magic doughnut! But little do they know, I'll be waiting for them! I shall do battle with them both, for the sake of my lucky-lucky autographed glow-in-the-dark snorkel!" Izzy suggested. Noah and Eva glanced briefly at her again and then at each other, debating the potential merits of this idea (for their powers of logic had been slightly worn away from the stress of having things routinely try to kill them) before dismissing it. The Baronne stared at Izzy for a long, long time, finally raising an eyebrow, her mouth hanging open wordlessly. "What? I love that snorkel."

The Baronne said nothing for a time. Eventually she glanced at Eva and Noah, who were marginally saner. (Marginally, because Eva was a walking temper tantrum waiting to happen, and Noah hung around Eva and Izzy all the time. Something was _wrong _with the boy.) "Attempted murder situation's really getting to her, I see."

"Nah," Eva said. "Not so's you notice."

"I think she's actually doing better than the rest of us," Noah said. "Being forced to focus a bit helps whatever's off with her brain."

"Sometimes when I fart, I can hear the echoes of the Dreamtime," Izzy said blissfully. "...But then people tell me to stop."

"What was I talking about again?" The Baronnne said. "I can't remember. Now all I can think about are echoes and the Dreamtime and farts. And crawfish for some reason, but I'm probably just hungry."

"I dunno, vauge portents?" Eva said. "Somethin' about evil presences and what this place is actually about. Something like that."

"Ah, yes," the Baronne said. "This airship thing...it is _not _someplace you would wish to be in the ordinary course of things."

"Yeah," Eva scoffed. "On account of it's a freaking _deathtrap_."

"Besides that." The Baronne bit her lip, looking at the metal of the airship all around, and her eyes unfocused; she blinked, and the look on her face was almost...haunted. Like she had glimpsed things almost too horrible and awful to bear, even for one such as her. "This place...ill intent and cruel desires are built into it's very structure. It's metal was forged with the desire to doom countries. It was designed from genius perverted through the lens of supremecist war-profiters. It was sent to the skies at the behest of a genocidal psychopath that embodied all the cruelest and most terrible aspects of the fire that burned in his every breath."

She paused. "It was engineered for a sole purpose, and it was only one of many for that purpose. And that purpose was to bring the most awful and final form of war to the last stronghold that stood against a warlike country that was little more than a rotting shell of it's former glory, and it was to accomplish this by bringing fire-soldiers to a kingdom born from the strength of the earth itself and burn the entire continent it stood on to the ground and exterminate every living thing on it in that hellstorm."

She tapped her coco macaque on the metal, and it echoed. At the very edge of the sound was the sound of burning things, and screams so distant they could hardly be heard at all. But they were there, all the same. "This ship was designed to be part of a fleet sent with the intention of murdering an entire _civilization_, and that intention has sunken into the spirit of it's metal. This has left traces that certain entities can and _will _exploit. They have already been drawn here, and the doorways here remain. They cracked open when the blood game you're stuck in started. They started opening wide when your friend Rossiu was attacked. Boy shook them off...not without some _consequences_ but he kicked those off too. But all that did was _delay _Them."

Noah had remained silent and skeptical throughout her speech. The calm earnestness of her words belied what he felt was the absurdity of what she was actually saying, and he felt inclined to believe her. (She was, after all, a voodoo goddess summoned to answer questions about an attack of demons. Arbitary skepticism would be in poor taste.) "...This ship is evil. That's what you mean, yeah?"

"As a word? 'Evil' suffices well enough."

"Figures that our nemesis that calls himself a host would get an airship made of evil-" Noah stopped. He glanced at Eva. "You realize what this means?"

Eva frowned. "Rossiu was..._right_. He wasn't making up crazy stuff when he said that Chris stole it from another world or whatever."

"Probably Chris sicced the demons on him for telling us that," Izzy commented.

"Wow, lucidity from you," Noah said archly. "Truly, wonders never cease."

"That's what she said!"

"You realize that makes no sense."

"If it _did_, I probably wouldn't say it."

"Hm, true..."

"So what do we do about the demons?" Eva said to the Baronne. Unfortunately, she was gone. "Huh?"

"Great, she's gone. That was a waste of time," Noah said. "A portentious and alarming waste of time."

"It's spelled with an 'a'," the Baronne's voice said from everywhere, and nowhere. "'Daemon'. That is what's comin'. That which is of Chaos, of the insane tides of awful possibility that washes against the shores of the Prime Material Planes. A chaotic and evil incarnation of the Immaterium, influenced by a long-gone war and driven to violence by the echoes of war's worst passions and excesses. And _that _is what is coming. The arm and will of a entity that _is _valor and courage given a shape and name, courage with such absence of restraint and sentient direction that it becomes courage unchained and _insane_. Courage without direction or restraint is not courage at all, but the desire to do battle, to defeat challenges regardless of the circumstances or the morality thereof. Not courage anymore, but bloodlust. Violence. You face violence and bloodlust in the shape of nightmares given flesh, and there are _coming_."

"Ah," Noah said. "That's...one of the less inspiring and pleasant things I've heard in a time of crisis."

"Chaos and it's daemons have that effect on people."

"Where are you talking from?"

The Baronnne chuckled. "Where? _Where_? I am psychopomp. I am traveler and transport in one. I am sometimes The Way, and sometimes I follow it. You speak of things that are everywhere and nowhere, but I truly _am_."

"Confusing, if not unexpected. So what do we do?" Noah asked.

"Sorry," The Baronnne said, and it sounded like she meant it. "Direct action on the part of guys like me would have, ah, undesirable effects on the World. I've done what I can without making unfortunate side effects occur...but forewarned is forearmed. You have an inkling of what may be coming, and that alone is encouraging."

"How!" Eva said.

"Well, better that you know what you're facing, even a little, instead of being totally blindsided by it." Eva grunted. "On that note," the Baronne said, her voice growing fainter. "Keep in mind that help can come from unexpected places. The evil of this place was the culmination of a hundred-year war that begin with the genocide of an entire people...but the last of that people returned, all the same, and _broke _that evil. And they do say that history repeats itself." She chuckled, distantly. "...They say green is the opposite of red. Blood-red flows down the that awful gore-crusted hillside we call history, but green things grow through it. Green makes things happen. Green makes things _spin_. Green? Heh, yeah, it's sure-as-hell a _chaotic _thing, but not bad chaotic. The kind of chaos that makes things change. And the Chaos that's coming is so very badly in need of real change, not the stagnant violence and corruption that's it has been for way too long. Don't make premature presumptions, kids; just because something looks human don't mean it _is,_ and just because someone goes with people that looks like monsters don't mean they're the bad guys. I've seen weirder saviors...believe me..."

"I. Don't. Under. STAND!" Noah nearly screamed.

There was a pause. Then, more impatient than ever: "Oh, _come on!_ Do I have to spell everything out for you? Seriously? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get off a good mysterious vanishing moment, and then you guys pull a whiny 'woe-is-me, I-don't-want-to-have-to-THINK' bitch-fit! Come on, _work _with me! Do you _want _to wind up Fatebound because you want to mess with crazy Legendary stuff, because _that's _a lot less fun than it sounds, seriously! Look, just...ugh, just chill out and work with what you get, and don't make dumbass assumptions. But, uh, green's probably a good thing. Yeah, definitely a good thing. Can I tell you guys that? Yeah, it's blatant enough for you to pay attention but subtle enough that you won't have any idea what the hell I'm talking about until you get to that point, at which point retrospect will make it blindingly obvious."

"...Hooray?" Izzy said. She paused. "Wait, I just realized! If you're doing stuff, doesn't that mean that voodoo is the one true religion! Is all other mode of thought a horrible foot-sniffing _MISCONCEPTION!_"

"Uh...no," The Baronne said. "Not really. Hell, my buddies come from the Norse, Egyptian, Aztec, Japanese and Greco-Roman pantheons, I've seen really pendantic angels made of holy fire advising walking corpses that are doing the whole 'I wanna be a real boy-slash-girl-slash-interderminate-gender' thing, there's a whole bunch of Fae souls being born into human bodies so they can keeping encouraging idealism and stuff, we got bona-fide werewolves policing the spirit world and ...so, yeah, encountering just one pantheon or cosmological principle and immediately assuming that _that's _the full undisclosed universal Principle is pretty lame, man!"

"Oh, okay," Izzy said, calming down.

"I missed that, could you try again?" Noah said, confused.

"Bah," the Baronne said. "Don't make me come up here and _make _me repeat myself! Or, I dunno, down here. Or sideways? Geez, extraplanar cosmologies is so confusing. Huh, Vill Au Camp is sort of underwater, so maybe it's 'down'...but it doesn't exist _with _the World, exactly...geez, my head hurts. And I'm an ichor-based philosophical construct so as not to mess with your guy's Fate or anything, I'm not sure I actually have nerves to hurt."

"What?" Eva said. "I can't hear you, your voice is getting harder to hear!"

"What? Oh, yeah, I'm totally fading out. So, uh...closing comments! Uh, don't drink to excess until you're positive it'll be a good experience or would be absolutely hilarious. Never use the power of pyrokinesis unless you absolutely have to, or if it's really entertaining; also, don't do it around girls with tons of hairspray, it's only funny the first dozen times. If at first you don't succeed, it's probably because you didn't put enough dynamite in the sewer system. And-"

"Ooh!" Izzy said. "One more thing, ONE MORE THING!"

"Oh, for the love of...what?"

"Would you say that you have friends...on the other side?" Izzy grinned like she had just told the most clever and original joke _ever_.

There was a pause. Then, "Damnit, that joke's getting old. First of all, yeah, I'm a Loa, so there's tons of people here that are my friends and are on the other side, so...there you go. And secondly...again, I'm a _Loa._ A god of voodoo. I _am _a friend on the other side." Her voice was so faint now it could barely be perceived. "Y'know what, I'm just gonna go now. Before something else stupid happens. I assume that this is an occupational hazard of hanging around you guys."

"Yes," Noah confirmed.

"Good to know, I'll let the other dudes know so they remember to stay the hell away from you guys. For the sake of their sanity, please, _think of the not-crazy gods that you would surely drive mad!_ Later, guys, it's been...bit annoying, actually." Her voice finally faded away entirely, little more than whispers on the wind, and then that too was gone.

"Huh," Noah said. "That was...interesting."

The clip stopped.

There was a long, long pause.

"Any thoughts?" Han said.

"Uh, yeah, one," Chris said, his eyes wide and his jaw still a little slack. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT! That's the second time I've said that in less than an hour! Totally a bad sign."

"Looked pretty obvious to me," Han remarked. "They summoned a bona-fide voodoo goddess. Huh...I don't think voodo actually works that way."

"Come on, seriously," Chris said. "What the hell was that! When does crazy shit like that happen _at all!_ Why do things keep babbling on about the airship being evil and nasty things breaking through like it's some kind of creepy cosmic horror story!"

"Well, I wouldn't know anything about evil cosmic intelligences breaking through," Han lied. "But...wait, 'things'?"

Chris looked a bit awkward for a moment. "...I'm definitely _not _having creepy dreams and second thoughts about stuff possibly _caused _by those dreams. Nope, no way."

"Okay. But seriously, have you _seen _the crap that's pulled on your show? How does any of this surprise you?"

"...Good point," Chris admitted, giving Han a suspicious look. "Well, uh..." He bowed his head. "...Crap, there's _no _way I'm putting that on without some heavy editing to get past the stuff about me getting an airship made of evil. How was I supposed to know that machines made for genocide have creepy vibes?"

"Basic logical thought?"

"Zip it!" Chris snapped. He fumed. "...That Rossiu kid is starting to be a royal pain."

"So? Just kill him off or something, then." Chris glanced at Han, putting it under consideration. "He could, like, become an enemy of your's."

"Psh, I've got, like, thousands of those," Chris said dismissively. "Like, the entire cast or somethin'. And they're _hopeless_. What are they gonna do, take command of an army of homicidal alien thrill-junkies, point them at me and say 'kill'?"

"It's a distinct possibility."

Chris snorted. "Yeah, like a million-to-one. And besides, you go with what you got, y'know?"

"...No, not really. I have _no _idea what you just said."

"Yeah, I get that a lot. My cousin gets it worse when out-of-townies show up." Chris toyed with an imaginary pencil, because he already secretly wanted to be a supervillain and supervillains _always _played with pencils. (At least he believed them to do so.) "Eh...I'm thinking of turning that Rossiu kid into a regular member of the cast just to mix things up. Again. The fan will _riot!_"

Han scratched his head. "Really? Huh. Cast member... does he keep showing up in the clips you approved or something?"

Chris sighed in exasperation. "_All the time!_ Keeps on butting in; disabling traps, passing by and giving them little tips on turning dangers against the other threats, periodically locking them into their rooms so they're forced to cooperate and partner up...I wanted to edit him out or just not show anything with him in it, but that wouldn't go, see? Half the clips he's in help make some sort of plot for the season, and the others...feh, it's like he set things up to make it stupid-hard to edit him out."

"Did he?"

"...I don't know," Chris said, looking creeped out. "Fanbase doesn't like him much; I hear that half the kids tune in every week just to see if he'll get beaten up or in a fight with someone or pushed out an airlock."

"After all that stuff he does?" Han said with a malicious grin. "Heh. People."

"He locks people in rooms to make them get along," Chris said blandly. "Not that the contestants know he's _behind _that...I think..."

"So the fans like him?"

"Are you kidding! Have you watched that kid? He's creepy as hell, more neroutic than a bagful of syphillitc monkeys, and you should see one of the clips where he rants to Alejandro for two and a half hours about the Greater Causes of the Common Good, the Will to Survive and how not being a total jerkass is a good idea. Something like that, Al wandered off before Rossiu realized he was gone. The fanbase just does _not _like him; something about him being a 'self-righteous promoted minion' and 'a creepy little bastard that gives off shotacon vibes' and 'a freak that's gonna grow up to take over a country and kill people because he thinks it'll save more people'. That last one makes sense, actually. He gets more hate then Sierra ever did, and trust me, _that's a lotta hate_!"

"So you wanted to edit him out to please the fans?" Han said, looking appalled. "You suck-up."

"What, are you nuts? People tune in half the time just because it pisses them off! I love reality TV! I don't know anywhere else I could make this much money making people angry at me for doing my job!"

"You could become a movie director that makes cheap adaptations of popular franchises!" Han said.

"What? No way, I'm still civilized."

"Psh, standards are for wimps! And moralist whiners. And people that breathe through their mouths. And cry when you eat their dogs and make them watch."

"Wait, what?"

"...I am begining to suspect that I'm making too many admissions of guilt around you, aren't I?" Han said flatly.

"Yeah," Chris agreed. "Seriously. What's wrong with you?"

"...Hey, my dad thinks I'm doing okay!" Han said indignantly. "Although I will admit that he's not the most, uh, _informed _of experts. A little divorced from perfectly sane opinion, he is."

"Yeah, sure, I wasn't listening after the part where you were being very stupid," Chris said. "So, what's next?"

"Well, I imagine you got more footage to look through, give the guys in production the head's-up on your final decision and whatever stuff you usually pull and not think too hard on why I showed you those specific clips, but first, wanna see my tattoo?"

Chris blinked. "What."

Han pulled his pants-leg up nearly to the hip: on his thigh was a black tattoo, a stylized dragon or serpent biting it's tail to make a perfect circle, and inside that circle was a eight-pointed star tipped with arrows.

Sufficiently distracted, Chris pulled away a little bit. "Uh, nice tattoo," He said uncertainly. "What's with the dragon thing?"

"It's called the Ouroborous," Han said pleasantly, grinning like the living avatar of all creepy psychopaths. "Dragon eating it's own tail. Rebirth within death. The destroyer that will never be killed. A serpent that cannot be slain."

"Uh, okaaay...and the star?"

Han chuckled. "Believe me, if you knew what that meant, you wouldn't have to ask about it." He grinned wider. "It'll become perfectly obvious soon enough, yeah?" He pulled his leg down, leaving a lot of questions waiting to be asked and making it clear that he had no intention of giving answers.

The question of the mysterious circumstances surronding everything was forgotten. (And Chris didn't even need to ask about if the airship was _really _evil or not. He'd known perfectly well what they were made for when he had stolen it and he couldn't care less.) Han showed Chris more clips, now somewhat more wary about _what_, exactly, Chris would see and gently steering him away from certain clips featuring information he now decided that Chris wasn't prepared for. (Mainly because he kept asking inconvienient questions.)

Chris hardly noticed his 'assistant' steering him this way; he thought that he could hear the most distant echoes of a awful and monstrous voice, made of many thousands and billions of utterly mad voices led by a single resonant and terrible one, and it just laughed and laughed and laughed.

That sort of thing could distract a man.

...

It was a pity that the lower levels of the airship hadn't had any cameras installed in the lower levels, because the recent intruders would have made for _awesome _television. (Well, Chris _could _have had cameras put in just in case the contestants made their way down there, but it had seemed like a waste of money, and Chris had had all entrances to the lower levels sealed off and the interns do all their work in there with only communication from Rossiu to direct the.)

This particular part of the lower levels had been kept dark; since no one had bothered coming down there for any reason since the contestants had left the brig and escorted into the upper levels before the ways back were sealed behind them. There was a sound like some rooting around with the lighting, and the lights went back on. In fact, they went back on so fast that the effect was like standing in front of a flash-bang.

Da Boyz stood revealed in that flash of light, having taken to wandering through the lower levels in an attempt to reach the upper levels (where, presumably, the contestants were) and having gone unnoticed thanks to the lack of cameras and astonishing luck in avoiding any of the interns forced into mechanical work. Most of them had the sense or extenuating circumstances (Kah-Mee-Nah's shades, the bionic eyes of Chopstop and Bitz and so on), but unfortunately Gritzgrotz wasn't so lucky. "Gah!" He yelled, clapping a hand over his eyes. "My EYES!"

Kah-Mee-Nah glanced aside through the glare; Boota, thanks to his sunglasses filtering out the light, was still sound asleep on his head. "Sorry," Lakkibork said from his position at a nearby fusebox. "Yaz told me ta get the lights on, I get the lights on! I get them on real good!"

"That's what _she _said!" Brikspok said.

There was a pause. Kah-Mee-Nah scratched his head in confusion. Boota grunted and kicked at him to make him stop. "What's that mean?"

"...I don't know."

"I'm blinded!" Gritzgrotz reminded them. "Now I'll have to get eye fixin's!"

Bitz snorted. "So what are you complainin' about? You can have some zakka put in! ZAKKA, MAN! It's like dakka, but with more flashy stuff. And lasers. Maybe t'ings explodin'. Can't go wrong with t'ings explodin'!"

"...Oh yeah! Nice to have _something _go right. We been down here fer _so _long and we got nuffin'! We ain't found nuffin' but killer robots that can't take a decent hit and liddle interns that run like un-Orky wusses when they hear us makin' noise and also tons of machines dat would be fun to muck with but we ain't got time for them. Oh, and we'll probably die if we do and make da airship fall outta the sky! Also, I've gone blind fer a bit."

"I wonders how I can adjust to sunlight again," Chopstop said. "Being in da dark all da time done _changed _me."

"We been up here for less than a few hours," Kah-Mee-Nah pointed out.

"...Being in da dark all da time changed me _quickly_."

"I don't wanna live in da darkness," Lakkabork complained. "It makes me itchy."

"THIS SUCKS!" Gritzgrotz yelled.

They glanced at Brikspok, as if waiting for him to complain to. The Weird Boy didn't; he just stared into the air, frowning slightly.

"Psh, this is just a little bit of a delay!" Kah-Mee-Nah said optimistically. Boota sleepily wiggled a paw approvingly. "We had a worse time of it when we tangled with Gazdakka in the Big Racemeet on planet Scorchmark! Remember the monster trucks that tried to kill us? And the flying monster trucks? And the flying monster trucks with tons of dakka? And the monster trucks that were actual monsters but didn't fly or have any dakka? And also the little go-carts with gophers in them. Still don't know how they got entries in the race. Or the anti-matter cannons."

"Yeah, but den I could see proper, on account of I wasn't blind," Gritzgrotz said mutinously. "Which is proper annoying, see? Oh wait, I can't, 'cause I'm BLIND!"

"You whine worse den a humie!" Bitz said. "I didn't cry half that much when you shot me in the face!"

"Yes you did," Lakkabork said.

"Shut it!"

"HERESY!" Grizgrotz boomed, whipping out his gun and shooting Bitz again. At least, that was his intention, but because of his blindness (and lack of aim to begin with) he hit completely the wrong target. "GORK DAMMIT, ME KNEE!"

Kah-Mee-Nah winced. Boota yawned, the noise waking him up, and he gave them all a dirty look for being so noisy. "And this is why it's a bad thing to go shooting yer buddies for no reason," He told Lakkabork, Bitz and Brikspok sternly. "Yer enemies are fair game, 'cause dey're jerks. But not yer buddies!"

"I unnerstand completely, Boss!" Brikspok said solemnly. He glanced around again.

"Bro!" Kah-Mee-Nah reminded him.

"Yeah, dat too." Kah-Mee-Nah and Boota rolled their eyes.

"Oh boy, a patient!" Chopstop said gleefully, stomping over to Gritzgrotz and carelessly picking him up.

"Oi, put me down!" Gritzgrotz snapped.

Chopstop didn't seem to pay attention. "Oh yes, I can see da potential here! We can has a jumpset put into that leg! Maybe amputate and put in a retracted blade into the primary bone-thingy we'll replace...maybe I'll use a fuel line, so if you get hit there it'll explode and yaz'll go flying and stuff. Everyone loves flyin'!"

"I don't!" Grizgrotz complained. "Flyin' ain't Orky!"

"And we can armor the joints with gravity-repulsor bits, so you can give super-kicks!" Chopstop said, not even remotely aware of his 'patient's' complaints. "Or bust holes in the space-time continuum. That happens somethings, with those bits. We had a Time Lord over the last time that happened. On da other hand, he was the cool one, dat one doctor whose name I can never remember. Then again, you'd be able to bust holes in da bad guys! Dat's always a nice one. Or I could just take off everything below the waist and plug you into a single-seater dakka-runner. Some of da Speed-Freaks _love _dat stuff."

"Not so popular lately," Lakkabork commented knowingly. "After the rest of da guys in da home galaxy got more serious, most of da Speed-Freaks are trying to look less silly. Being half-wheely thing don't give us a lotta respeck, ya know?"

"Psh," Kah-Mee-Nah said. "'Serious' is fer borin' people! And da Imperium. Da home galaxy needs ta lighten up."

"Then it's decided!" Chopstop declared, his Power Claw retracted into his arm and a number of lethal and terrifying instruments sliding out in it's place, including a number of syringes. "Hold still, I'mma inject you with somethin' that'll knock you out right quick. Won't feel a thing for da serjury, I promise!"

"Actually, dat's okay!" Gritzgrotz said quickly, his vision clearing up enough to let him see the horrifying instruments aimed at him; chainsaws, buzzsaws, shears, bonesaws, scalpels, a rubber ducky on a spring... "I think I'm seeing better, and I didn't even feel that bullet, 'onest-"

"Hey, look, it's One-Eye Yarrick and he says he wants you to be his new best enemy EVER!" Kah-Mee-Nah said, him and Boota pointing behind Gritzgrotz.

Gritzgrotz gasped. "Really!" He tilted his head as far as it could go. "Wait, I dun see him...hey, _WAIT A SECOND_-" Chopstop extended a syringe filled not with any liquid but with a small and disgruntled looking Squig; he plunged it into the side of Gritzgrotz's neck and pushed down, the Squig squeaking slightly as a greenish chemical was squeezed out of it and injected directly into Gritzgrotz's bloodstream. "Bleh?" Gritzgrotz said, and fell unconscious from the potent anesthesia. (A Painboy that carried a quality supply of anesthetics was a _smart _Painboy!)

"Okay then," Chopstop said ominously, looming over his unconscious and helpless victim. (Or patient. Among Ork physicians, it was really the same thing.) "Let's see what we can do here..." Surprisingly (to everyone besides Kah-Mee-Nah, who had seen it coming) most of the deadly instruments slid away and a thin set of claws delicately went into the knee wound and pulled out a large crumpled bullet. They retracted, and a spray-bottle appeared that quickly sprayed it's contents on the bullet-wound, which quickly healed over now. "And his eyes will be fine if he rests fer a bit," Chopstop said, throwing Gritzgrotz over his shoulder. "Problems solved, yeah? And I didn't cut anything off either! I AM DA BEST PAINBOY EVER!"

"No yer not!" Bitz said. Chopstop kicked him into a barrel full of garbage. (No one knew why it was there.) "Ow."

"Wait, all dat talk was just you foolin' around?" Lakkabork said.

"That, an' he likes messin' with people," Kah-Mee-Nah said.

"Yep," Chopstop confirmed. Boota hopped off Kah-Mee-Nah's head and picked up the barrel of trash with Bitz inside it (dispite it being _much _bigger than him) and threw it at Chopstop. "Ow!" Bitz said again, Chopstop not even reacting to it at all.

Kah-Mee-Nah clapped his hands together gleefully. Boota posed. "Okay, now here's da plan! Since Gritzgrotz won't complain so much I can't get a word in. Da way I see it, I figure we ain't in da right place were those humies we're after are!"

"We already knew that!" Bitz remarked. No one listened.

"Dat makes sense," Brikspok said, tuning in after being otherwise distracted with...something. "Ain't seen a trace of them around anywhere! Or sensed any of it."

"Yer powers ain't so strong without Da Boyz aroun' ta power yaz up," Bitz noted.

"...Yeah, well, some of us _like _not havin' ta worry about yer head explodin'," Brikspok said sullenly.

"Wuss." Brikspok smacked him on the head with his staff. "Ow! Why iz everyone hittin' me today!"

"'Cause yer a zog-head," Brikspok said. Then he hit Bitz again.

"Wot was _dat _for!"

"Da Boss wants to talk!"

"It's not 'Da Boss'!" Kah-Mee-Nah said hotly. "It's...feh, whatever, da point is dat we gotta break for da surface!"

There was a long pause. "Kah-Mee-Nah," Chopstop said slowly. "We iz onna _airship_. We iz flying _in da sky_. We'z already above da surface. Any more above, an' we'd be in space. Again."

Kah-Mee-Nah and Boota grunted in unison. "It's a metty-phor!"

"For what?" Bitz asked.

"Probably somethin' that doesn't sound so stupid," Lakkabork said.

Kah-Mee-Nah rolled his eyes. "Damn it, I miss havin' Viral around. _He _didn't complain about little details like this all the time, but no, he just _had _ta go recruiting among da Imperium _again_!"

"Actually, Viral complains about crap like dat all the time."

"More den any of us!" Chopstop said. "I reckon it's da shark in him. Dey like to fight."

"No, it's gotta be da _cat _part o' him," Brikspok suggested. "Cats, they's always fighting. I sees kitties, they just sittin' there, and POW! They fight like they's Orky, see?"

"My butt itches," Bitz said. They stared at him. "What? It does."

"My point is dat we gotta get out of these...whatever it is," Kah-Mee-Nah said patiently. "Some kinda engineering place? Engine room? Maint'nence place? A lungfish depository? Whatever. We gotta find a way up into...uh, where all the stuff happens, I guess. _Then _we'll find da humies! And you know what'll happen then?"

Brikspok chuckled darkly. "Ho yes, we know alright...heh heh heh..."

"Oh yeah," Chopstop said, chuckling like a grinding engine.

"I know allzright!" Lakkabork said, laughing a high-pitched chattering noise.

"I wasn't paying attention, but I'm always up fer a good evil laugh," Bitz said, joining in. He has a surprisingly good evil laugh. (He probably had a voice synthesizer for vocal chords or something.)

"Whee," Gritzgrotz said faintly. (He was still unconscious, but the call of a good laugh comes to all Orks, regardless of their consciousness or not.)

Kah-Mee-Nah led them all in a truly boisterous and mad laugh that boomed throughout the engine room...until he abruptly stopped, a confused look on his face. "Wait. Why'z we makin' us sound all evil an' stuff?"

"Bad influences," Brikspok said.

"Dat dun sound good," Gritzgrotz said, waking up for a few moments. "...Peace out!" He passed out again.

"...Who says 'peace out' anymore?" Chopstop said.

"I do!" Bitz said. Chopstop smacked him. "Ow! Okay, that joke's startin' to wear thin..."

Brikspok chuckled, and then he turned serious. "But dere _are _two things I think ya oughta know about..."

"Yeah?"

Brikspok paced around the place. "I'm getting a lotta big-bad vibes from this place. This _ain't _a good place ta be, see?"

"Yeah," Lakkabork said. "It's full of deathtraps and killer robots and savage beasts and also Heather an' Alejandro. Kind of hard to guess which of them is da worst."

Brikspok shook his head frantically. "It's not dat! Well, yeah, a liddle bit, but I wuz talking about somethin' else, see?"

"...No," Kah-Mee-Nah said cluelessly. Boota shrugged.

The Ork psyker paced around, little green sparks flashing around him in his anxiety. "The airship _itself_. Somethin' proppa _bad _went inta it's making. Somethin' dat da Chaos-things would find proppa attractive, see?"

Kah-Mee-Nah frowned thoughtfully. "...That'd explain a few t'ings. What kinda things?"

"I dunno," Brikspok said, frowning mightily. "I keep seein' bits an' pieces of things, and dey ain't good. I see _fire_, and humies dying. It's touched by hands what got blood on 'em, from over three humie generations ago. _Big-time _blood." Brikspok gave him a serious look. "Goes right down ta da metal, see?"

"...Yeah." Kah-Mee-Nah scowled. "Somethin's coming through, ain't it." It was not a question.

"Not yet," Brikspok said quietly. "But somethin' made it through for a little bit, not too long ago. Got pushed back, I think. Tried to use a mind what ain't wantin' to be used. But dere's too much humie-evil for da Chaos ta ignore this place. And...it's getting ready ta come through soon. I can _feel _it. Like a big nasty beastie, snufflin' and snortin' and spittin' everywhere...it's breath feels like my skin's melting and da gods turned away from me..." Brikspok's voice went quieter. "...it _hurts_, Boss...it _knows _I'm here, it knows what I can do and it _wants in me_..."

There was a long pause. "Not yer boss," Kah-Mee-Nah said, with the sort of finality that transcends simple commands. "I'm yer _brother_."

For a moment, Brikspok did and said nothing. Then, he stirred, eyes glowing with a green light that grew steadily brighter. "Yeah. _Yeah_. That ya is."

It might have only been a trick of the light, but the shadows began to stir in a horrible way, like massive and awful forms were casting grim reflections...and then were just as suddenly gone. Like a stealthy beast on the hunt.

Kah-Mee-Nah gave the darkness of the room, cast by the now-ample lighting, a harsh look. Then he turned to Brikspok and said, "An' what was the second thing?"

Brikspok pointed up. The Orks (and Kah-Mee-Nah, and Boota) looked up and saw that there was a hole right in the ceiling above them, going right through the floor above them...and the floor above that, and the floor above that, and the floor above _that_, it's edges frayed like claw marks and _melted _at the same time. "I t'ink we gots up a way up."

There was a pause.

"HOW DID NO ONE NOTICE THAT!" Kah-Mee-Nah demanded.

"I dunno," Lakkabork said. "Looks kinda new. Maybe it was made a little bit ago and no one's seen it yet?"

"Don't make much sense to me," Kah-Mee-Nah grunted. "Bit too much weird goin' on in this ariship for everythin' to always be that simple, yeah?" He frowned and looked up...and then he grinned. "Boota?" The miniturized Squiggoth hopped to his shoulder and saluted. "Wanna go do some scouting? We gotta widen them up a bit so we can fit." The holes weren't big enough to let even Lakkabork in.

Boota considered it for a moment, and then nodded, hopping from Kah-Mee-Nah's shoulder and jumping from the edge of the hole to the upper one. Kah-Mee-Nah watched him go and finally said, "Boyz! Fetch the vehicles! WE GOTZ SOME DRILLING TO DO!"

The Orks cheered.

Well, except Gritzgrotz, but he was unconscious, you can't blame him for that. (Except for the fact that he had been rendered unconcious to make him shut up, but besides that.)

...

The infirmiry, in spite of assurances to the contrary, was nowhere near as awful as it had been earlier.

The blood had been cleaned off, the gore scrapped away, the tables put back into order, the blankets burned and replaced, the hole in the floor...well, they weren't metalworkers or anything so they'd just put some boards over it without asking any question about where they had found lumber in the first place. (Nikigok had brought it with him; the lumber had been his own personal clubbing supply. For clubbing people upside the head. He wept bitter tears at having them appropiately for a _constructive _task.)

But it was still a bit untidy, and in defiance of all sensibility, Rossiu was _not _resting from his horrifying near-death ordeal but contentedly sweeping the floor of dust, sunflower seed shells and a few of his pieces that no one had picked up.

He was humming a hymn to himself in Korean; he had a surprisingly musical voice, and his sweeping was barely hampered by the large bandage he had on his shoulder that limited his range of movement only a little. It wasn't strictly _needed _at this point, but it was good for delaying a few awkward questions for a while.

He _liked _sweeping. It always seemed his lot to do the messy chores that no one else wanted to do, the unglamorous tasks that were nonetheless essential to everyday life _espicially _when they were supposed to be done unnoticed, and it was fortunate that Rossiu enjoyed doing them anyway. He liked feeling useful and wanted.

Still, he reflected as he swept and tried _very hard _not to think about what had happened to him earlier, he would still do those things even if he was hated for them. Even if the more distasteful jobs he tasked himself to earned him the spite and disgust of everyone around them. He would still do them, just so no one else had to.

Father Magin (_the man who was, Rossiu felt, the father he'd never really had and better than the one he remembered from childhood_) had always told him he'd had a martyr's complex. He didn't mean it as a bad thing, like a lot of people did these days. Father Magin understood, and Rossiu had learned, that sometimes there were things that just _had to be done_. They might make you unpopular. They might make you resented. People might well _hate _you for doing them, but they had to be done, regardless.

When Rossiu had really understood what Father Magin meant when he spoke of _duty_ and _responsibility _and _the right thing_, it was like a light had flicked on in his head. The darkness had dispelled, and it was like something in his head had snapped into place with a sound like all the doubts and sorrows of his childhood dying without a whimper, and in their place came peace.

He felt at peace now, doing his job, regardless of the risk to himself. Even if, he mused unhappily, nobody on this ship wanted anything to do with him-

His thoughts were interrupted when the door to the infirmiry opened. Rossiu looked up curiously and saw DJ (who he got along with fairly well, though he had it on good authority that DJ was one of those that thought that he was way too intense for his own good) peek in. "Uh, hi," DJ said. "I heard about what happened and Beth said you were feeling better and _WHAT ARE YOU DOING!_"

Rossiu blinked as DJ rushed inside, followed by a perplexed and worried Bridgette, Sadie, Geoff, Lindsay, Katie and, astonishingly, Duncan, all of which seemed just as shock to see Rossiu up and about. (Well, most of them. Duncan looked a bit impressed.) Beth followed a few moments later, looking embarrased for some reason. "Ah, hello," Rossiu said. "I noticed that this place was looking a spot messy so I decided to tidy up."

"I thought demons tried to eat you!" Sadie squealed. "We thought your arm was going to fall off! You shouldn't even be out of bed and you're cleaning!"

"I like making myself useful," Rossiu said, shrugging mildly, privately thinking that what _had _happened to him was certainly a lot worse than _that_.

"Your shoulder," Duncan said, scratching his head and looking like he was rethinking what he thought about Rossiu. "Demons. Remember? Bad day?"

"It was only yesterday," Rossiu said, smiling faintly. "And anyway, you get used to being violently assaulted by extradimensional horrors."

"...You've been attacked by demons before?" Duncan said incredulously.

"Well, actually, no. But it happened to me and I suppose I've already adjusted it, so I'm certain it counts." He shrugged, as if it was unimportant. "Anyway, I can hardly fulfill my duties in quietly keeping you all alive and finding a means to help you escape this deathtrap through passive-aggressive warfare with my employer."

"Wait, what?" Geoff said.

"I said nothing," Rossiu said innocently.

Beth coughed. There was a long silence from the others as Rossiu looked at her. "So, um," Beth said awkwardly. "What do you...y'know...remember?"

"Remember?"

"Of...your sickness?"

Rossiu tried to look blank.

(_His body tearing itself apart. Visions vast and unspeakable, a inhuman intelligence hammering at his every brain cell, turning his memories inside-out and warping everything it touched until what was good was bad and all he had left where the darkest moments. Blood, his blood, splattering everywhere along with mutinous pieces of himself come to squealing unholy life. Beth standing over him with a saw, such a grim look on her face. And...a _entity_, standing before him, tall and dark and strangely kind, speaking in a voice that went directly into his brain without bothering with his ears and sounding like slabs of lead slamming together-_)

"Nothing. Nothing whatsoever," Rossiu lied.

He _hadn't _remembered. Not at first. He wished it had stayed that way.

They looked at each other a moment more, sharing a private history that was brief and already filled with a horror neither of them wished to contemplate. Bridgette broke the silence and said, "But really, what are you doing up? You could, like, _hurt _yourself or your arm! Again. I'm sure being attacked by demons causes all kinds of nasty infections!"

Rossiu shrugged. "Well, I did a lot of thinking about how I could make Chris' life more difficult and this was the result. Too much?"

"That's not really a funny joke," Katie said, looking worried.

"You thought I was joking?" Rossiu said, mystified. "Wow, Father Magin was right, I really do need to work on my vocal tones and make my intent more clear..."

"Meh, that stuff's for wusses," Duncan said. "...Wait. Who's Magin?"

"The priest who taught me during my stay in the Vatican."

"You were raised by monks? Priests, whatever."

"I guess so."

"...Wow, that explains a lot."

Rossiu frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?" Duncan only snickered in response. "Uh...what are you all doing in here anyway? Don't you have...I don't know, important things to do?"

Geoff and Bridgette looked blankly at each other. "We, um, we were worried about you," Sadie said honestly.

Rossiu blinked. For a moment, his mind blanked, and he totally missed a faint scrabbling noise under him. "...What?" he said, totally bemused.

"Wow, you totally have a, um, what's the word?" Lindsey said. "A sheltered life?"

Rossiu felt extraordinarily out of his element, and couldn't say or think anything for a moment. Sierra and Cody _had _come by earlier, earnest and worried, but honestly he wasn't sure what to think of them; Sierra was more than a little weird and Cody had become distinctly unhinged recently. They weren't the best control group for emotional experiments.

DJ and Geoff shared an amused look at his astonishment. "Well, least you're okay, right?" DJ said, a touch cheerfully.

"Oh, certainly," Rossiu said, an idea coming to him. He paused, a funny expression on his face. The mop was dropped, and suddenly, his mouth dropped open and his eyes rolled back in his head. He stumbled back, his arms flopping loosely and his body moving..._strangely,_ like something was piloting his body. "_He comes_," Rossiu said in a harsh voice quite unlike his own. "_The Bloody One comes. Vast is His reach, and infinite is His wrath. In His footsteps do the oceans of blood he has unleashed, and they do swim with the endless world-corpses of those given to Him. In his left hand is the doom of all that He sees fit to challenge, and in His right hand is the axe that will unmake all things! His voice sows the Chaos of a thousand-fold berserkers, and he rises from his throne of skulls! His champions, the World-Breakers and the Betrayer, have opened the door forged in the intents of darkest fires. Know that His desire for war shall turn this realm to dust! KNOW THAT KHORNE IS COMING._"

The others recoiled in absolute horror. (Some of them watched horror movies.) "Holy crap, HE'S POSESSED!" Duncan said.

"Hit him in the head with something!" Geoff said. "IT'S FOR HIS OWN GOOD!"

"_I always knew it could end like this!"_ Katie and Sadie wailed, and they ran behind DJ.

"What are you doing behind me?" DJ said. "Do I look like a meat shield to you?"

"Yes!" They said.

Bridgette folded her arms and gave Rossiu an indignant look. "That's not very funny, you know."

Rossiu blinked and straightened up. "Hrm, I suppose not," He said with a shrug, clearly not posessed at all. (But pretty good at faking it.)

Everyone paused. Katie and Sadie peeked out from behind DJ, who looked like he wanted to run somewhere. Geoff, standing behind Rossiu with a metal folded chair in his hands, sneaked off and whistled nonchalantly when Rossiu gave him a polite look. Lindsey put her hands on her hips and frowned indignantly. Duncan stared incredulously for a moment, and then he started laughing.

"What posessed you to do something like that?" Bridgette said. Duncan started laughing harder. "That's not what I...you know what I mean!"

"I've been sitting here for far too long and I came up with things like that to pass the time," Rossiu explained in his usual deadpan. "The moment seemed too good to pass up."

Duncan, DJ and Geoff nodded approvingly; good practical jokes were regarded by both as awesome. "We might just make a decent buddy out of you after all," Geoff said, clapping Rossiu on the shoulder. Rossiu winced; Geoff was a pretty big guy.

"Um, thank you?" Rossiu said uncertainly.

"What was that 'Khorne' stuff about?" Katie asked while Sadie sighed in relief. Lindsey, the moment passed, was quickly letting her temper go, but Bridgette still seemed annoyed at Rossiu.

"I'm not actually sure," Rossiu admitted. "I believe I heard it in a..." He paused. It was quite a long pause. Enough time to remember what he had dreamed of in his..._condition_, after he'd been attacked. Enough time for him to swallow nervously, like a man who had seen such things that his brain had _forced _them to fade from memory, and the stain they left was enough to keep sleep away for a very long time. Things are remembered in dreams, however distantly, and some things should not be remembered. Rossiu looked like somebody who desperately did _not _want to remember. "A dream," He said at last. He shivered and put a hand to his shoulder, wincing at some unspeakable dream-born memory.

There were _things _that he dared not think of in those dreams. "Chaos," He muttered to himself. "It keeps coming back to Chaos."

"What was that?" Bridgette said. DJ and Duncan glanced at each other, a touch disturbed by the raw emotion in Rossiu's voice.

Rossiu shrugged and tried to smile. "Nothing important," He said, because _I dreamed and saw every sin and horror a man could commit come to screaming life and drive a million worlds to such evil that I dare not speak of away from the sun_ sounded weird.

"Well," Geoff said cheerfully, grabbing Rossiu by the arm to the younger boy's surprise. "If you're good enough to want to get stuff done, you shouldn't be hanging around this dump!"

"Wait, what?" Rossiu said.

"Sure," Duncan said, with an absolutely evil grin. "I bet there's _tons _of awesome stuff I bet you can help us with. Like, maybe, screwing around with this ship to make things a bit more...eh, _fun _for us?"

"Well, I suppose I would know, but-"

"Enough said!" Duncan said cheerfully. "C'mon, I think I found some gun turrets in the next corridor over."

They dragged Rossiu off, the boy looking completely uncomprehending of his circumstances. "Wait, you can't drag him off like that!" Bridgette said.

"It would appear that they are," Rossiu said, politely puzzled.

"Come on, babe!" Geoff told Bridgette. "He's doing fine enough to kid around! Let him hang with the cool kids!"

"We have some?" Lindsay said, perplexed.

There was a duo as Duncan and Geoff face-palmed. Bridgette snickered, despite herself. Sadie and Katie glanced at each other as if wondering if they now counted as 'cool kids'. Lindsey looked a bit miffed at the reactions since no one was answering her question. Rossiu still looked quietly resigned to his fate. DJ patted her on the shoulder. "I guess there's worse things we could be doing," He said.

"I suppose," Bridgette said doubtfully. She paused. "Do you hear a noise?"

Katie leaned aside. "What noise-" There was a loud creaking noise, of tremendous force being applied to a stiff and unyielding opposition. Rossiu saw the wood boards over the hole under his bed _bending_, splinters popping over and the nails sliding out of place. "Oh, that noise."

The wood _exploded_, splinters and chunks of wood flying everywhere (fortunately not hitting anyone), sawdust rising up and making DJ cough. "What the hell was that?" Duncan said. He blinked, seeing a figure rising out of the hole. "Uh, hey, guys?"

"What?" Lindsey said. Her eyes widened as she saw something approach from the hole, it's body strange and thick. "Oh no," She said, remembering a dozen other encounters that had started this way and inevitably ending in either running or destruction. "We gotta go, it's-"

The dust faded. A green furry thing the size of a large housecat stood in front of them, looking curious and unthreatening dispite it's impressive tusks. "Buu!" It said, raising a paw.

"That's not an evil robot or a trap," Bridgette said slowly. "That's not an evil robot or a trap _at all_."

"Or a crazy animal that wants to kill me," Geoff observed. DJ shuddered; somehow, Chris had found the baby seal and the panda. "It's-"

"IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!" Lindsay, Sadie and Katie squealed, hurting everyone's ears. Bridgette quickly ran and scooped the little creature up before they could get to it; the three girly-girls slumped in disappointment, for they knew better than to get between Bridgette and an animal.

Rossiu tilted his head. "This was unexpected," he said, giving the animal a suspicious look and looking furtively at the hole.

"What do you think it is?" Geoff said, leaning over to get a better look at it and grumbling to himself at how..._pleased _it was to be hugged by Bridgette like it was. He gawked when it wriggled out of her grasp only to crawl inside her sweater, snuggling against her chest. "Hey, personal space, buddy!"

Bridgette giggled, not at all offended by the liberties the animal was taking. "Ooh, fuzzy!"

"Buu!" The animal squeaked smugly, it's head poking out from the neckline of Bridgette's sweater.

Geoff crossed his arms and fumed. "Lucky little bastard..."

Duncan rolled his eyes and patted his shoulder in a gesture of manly commiseration. "Guess there's a few advantages to being short," he muttered. "...Wait, why's it wearing sunglasses?"

"...Maybe it likes looking stylish?" Beth guessed. Duncan snorted dimissively. "What? It could be!"

Katie tilted her head. "Why's it _green_?"

"...I don't know," Bridgette said slowly, wriggling a little as the animal snuggled into place. "I wonder what it's doing on the ship in the first place?"

"Maybe the little guy just got lost," DJ said, warily hanging back so that his animal curse didn't do the poor thing any harm. (He was, of course, still convinced that he was cursed; the others generally believed that he was the victim of some spectacularily bad luck, but the fact that bad things kept happening to the animals that attacked him only helped his case.) "Looks a little bit like a furry mole-rat, you ask me..."

"I think he looks like a Boota," Rossiu said suddenly. They stared at him. "What? He does." Boota blinked and stared, not at Rossiu, but at DJ, having not noticing him until now. He wriggled away from Bridgette's sweater with a small pop (the experience wasn't unpleasant for her, but Boota had that effect on girls), and he bounded right for DJ, compelled by some strange instinct.

"No no no!" DJ wailed. "Don't do it, little guy! I'm _cursed_!" Boota ignored him and hopped from the ground all the way onto his shoulder. "Aw, _no!_ Get away from me before you hurt yourself!" Boota ignored him and hopped onto the top of his head and onto DJ's hat...skullcap...the white thing he wore on his head. "No! Aw, no!" DJ sobbed in horror of the doom he was bringing on poor little Boota.

Duncan took a careful step back. "Man, you're overreacting. You don't have any animal curse-"

A spotlight fell right onto DJ's head. Or it would have, if Boota hadn't kicked it so hard it crumpled and shot it right into the hole he had come through with a terrific ringing noise. Geoff blinked. "...THAT WAS AWESOME!" He cheered. He blinked, remembering how Boota had invaded his girlfriend's personal space in such a way to make him envious. "...Sneaky little...trying to wow me with his awesome..."

"Well, look on the bright side," Beth said to DJ. "From one cursed person to the other! On the one hand, you might just be cursed, but on the other, it doesn't seem to bother him one bit."

"Yeah," Bridgette agreed, wondering vaugely well she felt envious of DJ's hat-thing. (To be fair, it was an _awesome _hat.)

DJ looked unsure, but the faintest glimmer of hope dawned on his face. Boota patted him on the head reassuringly. (He'd watched the show, of course, he knew all about the animal curse thing.) Derailing all further conversation on this topic was a loud and wild (but human) voice that came from the hole: "OY, BOOTA! WAS THAT YOU? IT SAFE UP THERE OR WHAT?"

"Who was _that?_" Duncan said incredulously while Boota perked up at the sound of that particular boisterous voice.

"He sounds hot!" Lindsay, Katie and Sadie said. Bridgette and Beth stared at them. "What? He does!"

"Why do I suddenly have an urge to self-narrate?" Geoff wondered, that voice having it's own effect on him. Rossiu and Duncan nodded sagely.

Another voice came from the hole, this one manifestly _not _human, rather like a rolling growl. "WE GOTS A FREE LAMP THINGY! SCORE!"

"GET DAT OFF YOUR HEAD," Another voice said, and this one sounded almost...mechanical. "YA LOOKS LIKE A GIT!"

"NUH-UH, IT MAKES ME LOOKED DISTINGUISHED!" There was a smacking noise. "OW! MORK DAMMIT, STOP HITTING ME!"

"OKAY."

"REALLY?"

"NOPE!" There was another smacking noise.

"BOOTA!" The first voice said. "YOU THERE OR WHAT? WAS YOU CAPTURED! _NO ONE CAPTURES ONE OF MY BROS! I'LL BLOW UP THE SHIP AND EVERYTHING ON IT WITH MY AWESOME!_"

"What," Duncan said.

Boota squeaked loudly. There was a pause. "_STOMPIN'S OFF THE MENU, BOYZ_." The first voice said again.

"AWWW!" The others said in disappointment.

Sadie scratched her head. "Okay...this is getting weird..."

Boota squeaked some more. There was an even longer pause...broken by an incredibly _loud _revving noise, like massive engines firing up, and right after that, the even louder squeal of power tools.

"What the crap!" Duncan yelled as green light flashed up from the hole. Beth and Rossiu stared in faint recognition. The entire floor under them rumbled so powerfully that several of them fell off their feet (Beth kept Rossiu from falling over, though), following by a tremendous rasping noise...

Like drills chewing through metal.

"HIDE!" Duncan said, not exactly the smartest move, but they panicked enough to do just that, overturning some tables to make barricades by the walls and jumped behind them dispite Boota's infuriated squeaks-

Just as the last of them ducked behind the makeshift barricades, the entire part of the room around the hole (thankfully far from all of them) tore itself apart as a huge monster of a motorcycle tore it's way right through, a tremendous drill shredding the floor as it came through for a brief moment, they all had a perfect look at the man riding it; younger than them but _different, _wild blue hair, something red like a cape flying behind him, really awesome shades-

And then he smashed right through the wall before Boota could so much as call out, leaving them all behind and still going. They heard the distant crashes as _more _walls were smashed through, and more after that, and more after _that..._and so on and so forth. There was a distant sound that implied that even the floor wasn't safe from that giant drill.

"Okay," Duncan said. "What the fu-"

He was cut off, as right then _more _giant machines came screaming through; a massive mutant hybrid of a truck and a jeep, battered and scratched and dented and bristling with weaponry, slamming into the floor with a wild screech and the huge green monster-thing whooping like a maniac, much of it replaced with creaking machines. This one smashed through the wall too, following the path of the first one, but going a completely different direction once it entered the corridor and somehow drilling right through the ceiling and still going.

After that came an even _bigger _monster-truck thing, it's wheels covered in spiked treads and chainsaws protruding from nearly every concievable surface, two _railguns _mounted on the front and so many other things that they didn't notice because of the massive mechanical behemoth hunkered into the front seat, a smaller (but still really big) monster of it's kind wedged next to it, and a third monster clinging to the back of it for dear life in one hand and a staff in the other, yelling in protest when the truck turned a sharp right at the gaping hole in the wall.

A bike came last, bigger than a car but smaller by far than the other vehicles, ridden by a large goblin-thing with a jet wired into it's spine, howling like a maniac as it drove it, did a wheelie, and abruptly drilled into the floor, disappearing from sight.

From all around, there were rumblings and clankings. The sound of chaos (but not _Chaos_) echoed so loud that it hurt their ears. When it faded, none of them had anything to say.

"Okay," Geoff said. He stopped. Then, "What the _hell _just happened!"

There was a pause that indicated that this was the best _anyone _could think to say.

Until Duncan, his voice solemn and grave, said, "I can die happy now, because I have seen the face of _awesome _and it was those truck-things and that big motorcycle."

Rossiu nodded. "_Indeed_." He and Duncan glanced at each other, clearly surprised that they had anything in common at all.

"Told you he'd be hot," Sadie told Bridgette smugly.

"You only saw him for barely a second," Bridgette pointed out.

"That was long enough!" She giggled, her and Katie blushing brightly.

"Did that first guy have a chainsaw-sword?" Beth wondered. "...I think I want one too."

"I'm scared and confused," DJ said plainly. And on DJ's shoulder, Boota facepalmed, distraught that no one ever paid _attention _to anything any more.

Clearly, this was going to be more difficult than he'd thought.

"I knew there was something that would come from the bottom of the airship!" Rossiu said abruptly.

...

A/N: Seriously, Kamina and Da Boyz are going to meet the Total Drama kids. For a crossover story, there's not a whole lot of 'characters from Series A meets characters from Series B' going on here. Mosty it's vague portents and creepiness and cameos from Scion and Rossiu.

By the way, if you're wondering, Baronne De La Croix is a signature character from the epic role-playing game Scion, wherein the player characters are the titular half-divine children of the Gods, battling the primordial Titans in their parent's names. (Since those parents are busy on the home front of the Overworld.) The general pantheons (with others included in various splatbooks) are the Aesir (the Norse gods, so popular they got their own book), the Dodekathon (the Greco-Roman gods), the Atzlanti (the Aztec gods), the Pesedjat (the Egyptian gods), the Amatsukami (the Japanese gods) and, of course, the Loa (the voodoo gods). For some reason, I've recently gotten into researching the fictional variations of Voodoo, and when I'm into stuff, it tends to intrude into my stories like this. Since I'm _extremely _uncomfortable with portraying real-life stuff in my stories (and, honestly, I'm paranoid about offending someone), I took the vision of Voodoo as laid out in Scion and took it from there.

Also, Levia T. Han. Yeah, definitely NOT someone to trust. (He squicks out Chris. _That's _a bad sign if I ever saw one.) He's also not an original or from Warhammer 40K in any way, but a character from one of my favorite animes given the Warhammer 40K treatment. The tattoo ought to be a big clue. Obviously, his current name is a pseudonym, and a lazy one at that.

Originally, I was going to have everything after Kamina showing up with the Orks to be clips Chris watched with Han. I decided that the last two clips worked better as they are now and things...escalated from there. (That tends to happen with me.) That end bit with Kamina and the Orks literally crashing in wasn't even originally there!


End file.
